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Ann Radcliffe - "A Sicilian Romance"

The White Company

A >> Arthur Conan Doyle >> The White Company




"But, father," interrupted the young man "it is surely true that
I am already advanced several degrees in clerkship?"

"Yes, fair son, but not so far as to bar you from the garb you
now wear or the life which you must now lead. You have been
porter?"

"Yes, father."

"Exorcist?"

"Yes, father."

"Reader?"

"Yes, father."

"Acolyte?"

"Yes, father."

"But have sworn no vow of constancy or chastity?"

"No, father."

"Then you are free to follow a worldly life. But let me hear,
ere you start, what gifts you take away with you from Beaulieu?
Some I already know. There is the playing of the citole and the
rebeck. Our choir will be dumb without you. You carve too?"

The youth's pale face flushed with the pride of the skilled
workman. "Yes, holy father," he answered. "Thanks to good
brother Bartholomew, I carve in wood and in ivory, and can do
something also in silver and in bronze. From brother Francis I
have learned to paint on vellum, on glass, and on metal, with a
knowledge of those pigments and essences which can preserve the
color against damp or a biting air. Brother Luke hath given me
some skill in damask work, and in the enamelling of shrines,
tabernacles, diptychs and triptychs. For the rest, I know a
little of the making of covers, the cutting of precious stones,
and the fashioning of instruments."

"A goodly list, truly," cried the superior with a smile. "What
clerk of Cambrig or of Oxenford could say as much? But of thy
reading--hast not so much to show there, I fear?"

"No, father, it hath been slight enough. Yet, thanks to our good
chancellor, I am not wholly unlettered. I have read Ockham,
Bradwardine, and other of the schoolmen, together with the
learned Duns Scotus and the book of the holy Aquinas."

"But of the things of this world, what have you gathered from
your reading? From this high window you may catch a glimpse over
the wooden point and the smoke of Bucklershard of the mouth of
the Exe, and the shining sea. Now, I pray you Alleyne, if a man
were to take a ship and spread sail across yonder waters, where
might he hope to arrive?"

The youth pondered, and drew a plan amongst the rushes with the
point of his staff. "Holy father," said he, "he would come upon
those parts of France which are held by the King's Majesty. But
if he trended to the south he might reach Spain and the Barbary
States. To his north would be Flanders and the country of the
Eastlanders and of the Muscovites."

"True. And how if, after reaching the King's possessions, he
still journeyed on to the eastward?"

"He would then come upon that part of France which is still in
dispute, and he might hope to reach the famous city of Avignon,
where dwells our blessed father, the prop of Christendom."

"And then?"

"Then he would pass through the land of the Almains and the great
Roman Empire, and so to the country of the Huns and of the
Lithuanian pagans, beyond which lies the great city of
Constantine and the kingdom of the unclean followers of Mahmoud."

"And beyond that, fair son?"

"Beyond that is Jerusalem and the Holy Land, and the great river
which hath its source in the Garden of Eden."

"And then?"

"Nay, good father, I cannot tell. Methinks the end of the world
is not far from there."

"Then we can still find something to teach thee, Alleyne," said
the Abbot complaisantly. "Know that many strange nations lie
betwixt there and the end of the world. There is the country of
the Amazons, and the country of the dwarfs, and the country of
the fair but evil women who slay with beholding, like the
basilisk. Beyond that again is the kingdom of Prester John and
of the great Cham. These things I know for very sooth, for I had
them from that pious Christian and valiant knight, Sir John de
Mandeville, who stopped twice at Beaulieu on his way to and from
Southampton, and discoursed to us concerning what he had seen
from the reader's desk in the refectory, until there was many a
good brother who got neither bit nor sup, so stricken were they
by his strange tales."

"I would fain know, father," asked the young man, "what there may
be at the end of the world?"

"There are some things," replied the Abbot gravely, "into which
it was never intended that we should inquire. But you have a
long road before you. Whither will you first turn?"

"To my brother's at Minstead. If he be indeed an ungodly and
violent man, there is the more need that I should seek him out
and see whether I cannot turn him to better ways."

The Abbot shook his head. "The Socman of Minstead hath earned an
evil name over the country side," he said. "If you must go to
him, see at least that he doth not turn you from the narrow path
upon which you have learned to tread. But you are in God's
keeping, and Godward should you ever look in danger and in
trouble. Above all, shun the snares of women, for they are ever
set for the foolish feet of the young. Kneel down, my child, and
take an old man's blessing."

Alleyne Edricson bent his head while the Abbot poured out his
heartfelt supplication that Heaven would watch over this young
soul, now going forth into the darkness and danger of the world.
It was no mere form for either of them. To them the outside life
of mankind did indeed seem to be one of violence and of sin,
beset with physical and still more with spiritual danger.
Heaven, too, was very near to them in those days. God's direct
agency was to be seen in the thunder and the rainbow, the
whirlwind and the lightning. To the believer, clouds of angels
and confessors, and martyrs, armies of the sainted and the
saved, were ever stooping over their struggling brethren upon
earth, raising, encouraging, and supporting them. It was then
with a lighter heart and a stouter courage that the young man
turned from the Abbot's room, while the latter, following him to
the stair-head, finally commended him to the protection of the
holy Julian, patron of travellers.

Underneath, in the porch of the Abbey, the monks had gathered to
give him a last God-speed. Many had brought some parting token
by which he should remember them. There was brother Bartholomew
with a crucifix of rare carved ivory, and brother Luke With a
white-backed psalter adorned with golden bees, and brother
Francis with the "Slaying of the Innocents" most daintily set
forth upon vellum. All these were duly packed away deep in the
traveller's scrip, and above them old pippin-faced brother
Athanasius had placed a parcel of simnel bread and rammel cheese,
with a small flask of the famous blue-sealed Abbey wine. So,
amid hand-shakings and laughings and blessings, Alleyne Edricson
turned his back upon Beaulieu.

At the turn of the road he stopped and gazed back. There was the
wide-spread building which he knew so well, the Abbot's house,
the long church, the cloisters with their line of arches, all
bathed and mellowed in the evening sun. There too was the broad
sweep of the river Exe, the old stone well, the canopied niche of
the Virgin, and in the centre of all the cluster of white-robed
figures who waved their hands to him. A sudden mist swam up
before the young man's eyes, and he turned away upon his journey
with a heavy heart and a choking throat.



CHAPTER III.

HOW HORDLE JOHN COZENED THE FULLER OF LYMINGTON.


It is not, however, in the nature of things that a lad of twenty,
with young life glowing in his veins and all the wide world
before him, should spend his first hours of freedom in mourning
for what he had left. Long ere Alleyne was out of sound of the
Beaulieu bells he was striding sturdily along, swinging his staff
and whistling as merrily as the birds in the thicket. It was an
evening to raise a man's heart. The sun shining slantwise
through the trees threw delicate traceries across the road, with
bars of golden light between. Away in the distance before and
behind, the green boughs, now turning in places to a coppery
redness, shot their broad arches across the track. The still
summer air was heavy with the resinous smell of the great forest.
Here and there a tawny brook prattled out from among the
underwood and lost itself again in the ferns and brambles upon
the further side. Save the dull piping of insects and the sough
of the leaves, there was silence everywhere--the sweet restful
silence of nature.

And yet there was no want of life--the whole wide wood was full
of it. Now it was a lithe, furtive stoat which shot across the
path upon some fell errand of its own; then it was a wild cat
which squatted upon the outlying branch of an oak and peeped at
the traveller with a yellow and dubious eye. Once it was a wild
sow which scuttled out of the bracken, with two young sounders at
her heels, and once a lordly red staggard walked daintily out
from among the tree trunks, and looked around him with the
fearless gaze of one who lived under the King's own high
protection. Alleyne gave his staff a merry flourish, however,
and the red deer bethought him that the King was far off, so
streaked away from whence he came.

The youth had now journeyed considerably beyond the furthest
domains of the Abbey. He was the more surprised therefore when,
on coming round a turn in the path, he perceived a man clad in
the familiar garb of the order, and seated in a clump of heather
by the roadside. Alleyne had known every brother well, but this
was a face which was new to him--a face which was very red and
puffed, working this way and that, as though the man were sore
perplexed in his mind. Once he shook both hands furiously in the
air, and twice he sprang from his seat and hurried down the road.
When he rose, however, Alleyne observed that his robe was much
too long and loose for him in every direction, trailing upon the
ground and bagging about his ankles, so that even with trussed-up
skirts he could make little progress. He ran once, but the long
gown clogged him so that he slowed down into a shambling walk,
and finally plumped into the heather once more.

"Young friend," said he, when Alleyne was abreast of him, "I fear
from thy garb that thou canst know little of the Abbey of
Beaulieu."

"Then you are in error, friend," the clerk answered, "for I have
spent all my days within its walls."

"Hast so indeed?" cried he. "Then perhaps canst tell me the name
of a great loathly lump of a brother wi' freckled face an' a hand
like a spade. His eyes were black an' his hair was red an' his
voice like the parish bull. I trow that there cannot be two
alike in the same cloisters."

"That surely can be no other than brother John," said Alleyne.
"I trust he has done you no wrong, that you should be so hot
against him."

"Wrong, quotha?" cried the other, jumping out of the heather.
"Wrong! why he hath stolen every plack of clothing off my back,
if that be a wrong, and hath left me here in this sorry frock of
white falding, so that I have shame to go back to my wife, lest
she think that I have donned her old kirtle. Harrow and alas
that ever I should have met him!"

"But how came this?" asked the young clerk, who could scarce keep
from laughter at the sight of the hot little man so swathed in
the great white cloak.

"It came in this way," he said, sitting down once more: "I was
passing this way, hoping to reach Lymington ere nightfall when I
came on this red-headed knave seated even where we are sitting
now. I uncovered and louted as I passed thinking that he might
be a holy man at his orisons, but he called to me and asked me if
I had heard speak of the new indulgence in favor of the
Cistercians. `Not I,' I answered. `Then the worse for thy
soul!' said he; and with that he broke into a long tale how that
on account of the virtues of the Abbot Berghersh it had been
decreed by the Pope that whoever should wear the habit of a monk
of Beaulieu for as long as he might say the seven psalms of David
should be assured of the kingdom of Heaven. When I heard this I
prayed him on my knees that he would give me the use of his gown,
which after many contentions he at last agreed to do, on my
paying him three marks towards the regilding of the image of
Laurence the martyr. Having stripped his robe, I had no choice
but to let him have the wearing of my good leathern jerkin and
hose, for, as he said, it was chilling to the blood and unseemly
to the eye to stand frockless whilst I made my orisons. He had
scarce got them on, and it was a sore labor, seeing that my
inches will scarce match my girth--he had scarce got them on, I
say, and I not yet at the end of the second psalm, when he bade
me do honor to my new dress, and with that set off down the road
as fast as feet would carry him. For myself, I could no more run
than if I had been sown in a sack; so here I sit, and here I am
like to sit, before I set eyes upon my clothes again."

"Nay, friend, take it not so sadly," said Alleyne, clapping the
disconsolate one upon the shoulder. "Canst change thy robe for a
jerkin once more at the Abbey, unless perchance you have a friend
near at hand."

"That have I," he answered, "and close; but I care not to go nigh
him in this plight, for his wife hath a gibing tongue, and will
spread the tale until I could not show my face in any market from
Fordingbridge to Southampton. But if you, fair sir, out of your
kind charity would be pleased to go a matter of two bow-shots out
of your way, you would do me such a service as I could scarce
repay."

"With all my heart," said Alleyne readily.

"Then take this pathway on the left, I pray thee, and then the
deer-track which passes on the right. You will then see under a
great beech-tree the hut of a charcoal-burner. Give him my name,
good sir, the name of Peter the fuller, of Lymington, and ask him
for a change of raiment, that I may pursue my journey without
delay. There are reasons why he would be loth to refuse me."

Alleyne started off along the path indicated, and soon found the
log-hut where the burner dwelt. He was away faggot-cutting in
the forest, but his wife, a ruddy bustling dame, found the
needful garments and tied them into a bundle. While she busied
herself in finding and folding them, Alleyne Edricson stood by
the open door looking in at her with much interest and some
distrust, for he had never been so nigh to a woman before. She
had round red arms, a dress of some sober woollen stuff, and a
brass brooch the size of a cheese-cake stuck in the front of it.

"Peter the fuller!" she kept repeating. "Marry come up! if I
were Peter the fuller's wife I would teach him better than to
give his clothes to the first knave who asks for them. But he
was always a poor, fond, silly creature, was Peter, though we are
beholden to him for helping to bury our second son Wat, who was a
'prentice to him at Lymington in the year of the Black Death.
But who are you, young sir?"

"I am a clerk on my road from Beaulieu to Minstead."

"Aye, indeed! Hast been brought up at the Abbey then. I could
read it from thy reddened cheek and downcast eye. Hast learned
from the monks, I trow, to fear a woman as thou wouldst a
lazar-house. Out upon them! that they should dishonor their own
mothers by such teaching. A pretty world it would be with all
the women out of it."

"Heaven forfend that such a thing should come to pass!" said
Alleyne.

"Amen and amen! But thou art a pretty lad, and the prettier for
thy modest ways. It is easy to see from thy cheek that thou hast
not spent thy days in the rain and the heat and the wind, as my
poor Wat hath been forced to do."

"I have indeed seen little of life, good dame."

"Wilt find nothing in it to pay for the loss of thy own
freshness. Here are the clothes, and Peter can leave them when
next he comes this way. Holy Virgin! see the dust upon thy
doublet! It were easy to see that there is no woman to tend to
thee. So!--that is better. Now buss me, boy."

Alleyne stooped and kissed her, for the kiss was the common
salutation of the age, and, as Erasmus long afterwards remarked,
more used in England than in any other country. Yet it sent the
blood to his temples again, and he wondered, as he turned away,
what the Abbot Berghersh would have answered to so frank an
invitation. He was still tingling from this new experience when
he came out upon the high-road and saw a sight which drove all
other thoughts from his mind.

Some way down from where he had left him the unfortunate Peter
was stamping and raving tenfold worse than before. Now, however,
instead of the great white cloak, he had no clothes on at all,
save a short woollen shirt and a pair of leather shoes. Far down
the road a long-legged figure was running, with a bundle under
one arm and the other hand to his side, like a man who laughs
until he is sore.

"See him!" yelled Peter. "Look to him! You shall be my witness.
He shall see Winchester jail for this. See where he goes with my
cloak under his arm!"

"Who then?" cried Alleyne.

"Who but that cursed brother John. He hath not left me clothes
enough to make a gallybagger. The double thief hath cozened me
out of my gown."

"Stay though, my friend, it was his gown," objected Alleyne.

"It boots not. He hath them all--gown, jerkin, hosen and all.
Gramercy to him that he left me the shirt and the shoon. I doubt
not that he will be back for them anon."

"But how came this?" asked Alleyne, open-eyed with astonishment.

"Are those the clothes? For dear charity's sake give them to me.
Not the Pope himself shall have these from me, though he sent the
whole college of cardinals to ask it. How came it? Why, you had
scarce gone ere this loathly John came running back again, and,
when I oped mouth to reproach him, he asked me whether it was
indeed likely that a man of prayer would leave his own godly
raiment in order to take a layman's jerkin. He had, he said, but
gone for a while that I might be the freer for my devotions. On
this I plucked off the gown, and he with much show of haste did
begin to undo his points; but when I threw his frock down he
clipped it up and ran off all untrussed, leaving me in this sorry
plight. He laughed so the while, like a great croaking frog,
that I might have caught him had my breath not been as short as
his legs were long."

The young man listened to this tale of wrong with all the
seriousness that he could maintain; but at the sight of the pursy
red-faced man and the dignity with which he bore him, the
laughter came so thick upon him that he had to lean up against a
tree-trunk. The fuller looked sadly and gravely at him; but
finding that he still laughed, he bowed with much mock politeness
and stalked onwards in his borrowed clothes. Alleyne watched him
until he was small in the distance, and then, wiping the tears
from his eyes, he set off briskly once more upon his journey.



CHAPTER IV.

HOW THE BAILIFF OF SOUTHAMPTON SLEW THE TWO MASTERLESS MEN.


The road along which he travelled was scarce as populous as most
other roads in the kingdom, and far less so than those which lie
between the larger towns. Yet from time to time Alleyne met
other wayfarers, and more than once was overtaken by strings of
pack mules and horsemen journeying in the same direction as
himself. Once a begging friar came limping along in a brown
habit, imploring in a most dolorous voice to give him a single
groat to buy bread wherewith to save himself from impending
death. Alleyne passed him swiftly by, for he had learned from
the monks to have no love for the wandering friars, and, besides,
there was a great half-gnawed mutton bone sticking out of his
pouch to prove him a liar. Swiftly as he went, however, he could
not escape the curse of the four blessed evangelists which the
mendicant howled behind him. So dreadful are his execrations
that the frightened lad thrust his fingers into his ear-holes,
and ran until the fellow was but a brown smirch upon the yellow
road.

Further on, at the edge of the woodland, he came upon a chapman
and his wife, who sat upon a fallen tree. He had put his pack
down as a table, and the two of them were devouring a great
pasty, and washing it down with some drink from a stone jar. The
chapman broke a rough jest as he passed, and the woman called
shrilly to Alleyne to come and join them, on which the man,
turning suddenly from mirth to wrath, began to belabor her with
his cudgel. Alleyne hastened on, lest he make more mischief, and
his heart was heavy as lead within him. Look where he would, he
seemed to see nothing but injustice and violence and the
hardness of man to man.

But even as he brooded sadly over it and pined for the sweet
peace of the Abbey, he came on an open space dotted with holly
bushes, where was the strangest sight that he had yet chanced
upon. Near to the pathway lay a long clump of greenery, and from
behind this there stuck straight up into the air four human legs
clad in parti-colored hosen, yellow and black. Strangest of all
was when a brisk tune struck suddenly up and the four legs began
to kick and twitter in time to the music. Walking on tiptoe
round the bushes, he stood in amazement to see two men bounding
about on their heads, while they played, the one a viol and the
other a pipe, as merrily and as truly as though they were seated
in a choir. Alleyne crossed himself as he gazed at this
unnatural sight, and could scarce hold his ground with a steady
face, when the two dancers, catching sight of him, came bouncing
in his direction. A spear's length from him, they each threw a
somersault into the air, and came down upon their feet with
smirking faces and their hands over their hearts.

"A guerdon--a guerdon, my knight of the staring eyes!" cried one.

"A gift, my prince!" shouted the other. "Any trifle will serve--a
purse of gold, or even a jewelled goblet."

Alleyne thought of what he had read of demoniac possession--the
jumpings, the twitchings, the wild talk. It was in his mind to
repeat over the exorcism proper to such attacks; but the two
burst out a-laughing at his scared face, and turning on to their
heads once more, clapped their heels in derision.

"Hast never seen tumblers before?" asked the elder, a black-browed,
swarthy man, as brown and supple as a hazel twig. "Why shrink
from us, then, as though we were the spawn of the Evil One?"

"Why shrink, my honey-bird? Why so afeard, my sweet cinnamon?"
exclaimed the other, a loose-jointed lanky youth with a dancing,
roguish eye.

"Truly, sirs, it is a new sight to me," the clerk answered.
"When I saw your four legs above the bush I could scarce credit
my own eyes. Why is it that you do this thing?"

"A dry question to answer," cried the younger, coming back on to
his feet. "A most husky question, my fair bird! But how? A
flask, a flask!--by all that is wonderful!" He shot out his hand
as he spoke, and plucking Alleyne's bottle out of his scrip, he
deftly knocked the neck off, and poured the half of it down his
throat. The rest he handed to his comrade, who drank the wine,
and then, to the clerk's increasing amazement, made a show of
swallowing the bottle, with such skill that Alleyne seemed to see
it vanish down his throat. A moment later, however, he flung it
over his head, and caught it bottom downwards upon the calf of
his left leg.

"We thank you for the wine, kind sir," said he, "and for the
ready courtesy wherewith you offered it. Touching your question,
we may tell you that we are strollers and jugglers, who, having
performed with much applause at Winchester fair, are now on our
way to the great Michaelmas market at Ringwood. As our art is a
very fine and delicate one, however, we cannot let a day go by
without exercising ourselves in it, to which end we choose some
quiet and sheltered spot where we may break our journey. Here
you find us; and we cannot wonder that you, who are new to
tumbling, should be astounded, since many great barons, earls,
marshals and knight, who have wandered as far as the Holy Land,
are of one mind in saying that they have never seen a more noble
or gracious performance. If you will be pleased to sit upon that
stump, we will now continue our exercise."

Alleyne sat down willingly as directed with two great bundles on
either side of him which contained the strollers' dresses--doublets
of flame-colored silk and girdles of leather, spangled with brass
and tin. The jugglers were on their heads once more, bounding
about with rigid necks, playing the while in perfect time and
tune. It chanced that out of one of the bundles there stuck the
end of what the clerk saw to be a cittern, so drawing it forth,
he tuned it up and twanged a harmony to the merry lilt which the
dancers played. On that they dropped their own instruments, and
putting their hands to the ground they hopped about faster and
faster, ever shouting to him to play more briskly, until at last
for very weariness all three had to stop.

"Well played, sweet poppet!" cried the younger. "Hast a rare
touch on the strings."

"How knew you the tune?" asked the other.

"I knew it not. I did but follow the notes I heard."

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