LITMIR.BIZ

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the combat between his conscience and his inclinations that he dared not look round, lest his resolution should slip away from him. It was not until he was deep among the tree trunks that he cast a glance backwards, when he found that he could still see them through the branches on the road above him. The archer was standing with folded arms, his bow jutting from over his shoulder, and the sun gleaming brightly upon his head-piece and the links of his chainmail. Beside him stood his giant recruit, still clad in the home-spun and ill-fitting garments of the fuller of Lymington, with arms and legs shooting out of his scanty garb. Even as Alleyne watched them they turned upon their heels and plodded off together upon their way.

      Chapter IX

      How Strange Things Befell in Minstead Wood

      The path which the young clerk had now to follow lay through a magnificent forest of the very heaviest timber, where the giant boles of oak and of beech formed long aisles in every direction, shooting up their huge branches to build the majestic arches of Nature’s own cathedral. Beneath lay a broad carpet of the softest and greenest moss, flecked over with fallen leaves, but yielding pleasantly to the foot of the traveller. The track which guided him was one so seldom used that in places it lost itself entirely among the grass, to reappear as a reddish rut between the distant tree trunks. It was very still here in the heart of the woodlands. The gentle rustle of the branches and the distant cooing of pigeons were the only sounds which broke in upon the silence, save that once Alleyne heard afar off a merry call upon a hunting bugle and the shrill yapping of the hounds.

      It was not without some emotion that he looked upon the scene around him, for, in spite of his secluded life, he knew enough of the ancient greatness of his own family to be aware that the time had been when they had held undisputed and paramount sway over all that tract of country. His father could trace his pure Saxon lineage back to that Godfrey Malf who had held the manors of Bisterne and of Minstead at the time when the Norman first set mailed foot upon English soil. The afforestation of the district, however, and its conversion into a royal demesne had clipped off a large section of his estate, while other parts had been confiscated as a punishment for his supposed complicity in an abortive Saxon rising. The fate of the ancestor had been typical of that of his descendants. During three hundred years their domains had gradually contracted, sometimes through royal or feudal encroachment, and sometimes through such gifts to the Church as that with which Alleyne’s father had opened the doors of Beaulieu Abbey to his younger son. The importance of the family had thus dwindled, but they still retained the old Saxon manor-house, with a couple of farms and a grove large enough to afford pannage to a hundred pigs – “sylva de centum porcis[99],” as the old family parchments describe it. Above all, the owner of the soil could still hold his head high as the veritable Socman of Minstead – that is, as holding the land in free socage, with no feudal superior, and answerable to no man lower than the king. Knowing this, Alleyne felt some little glow of worldly pride as he looked for the first time upon the land with which so many generations of his ancestors had been associated. He pushed on the quicker, twirling his staff merrily, and looking out at every turn of the path for some sign of the old Saxon residence. He was suddenly arrested, however, by the appearance of a wild-looking fellow armed with a club, who sprang out from behind a tree and barred his passage. He was a rough, powerful peasant, with cap and tunic of untanned sheepskin, leather breeches, and galligaskins round legs and feet.

      “Stand!” he shouted, raising his heavy cudgel to enforce the order. “Who are you who walk so freely through the wood? Whither would you go, and what is your errand?”

      “Why should I answer your questions, my friend?” said Alleyne, standing on his guard.

      “Because your tongue may save your pate. But where have I looked upon your face before?”

      “No longer ago than last night at the ‘Pied Merlin,’” the clerk answered, recognising the escaped serf who had been so outspoken as to his wrongs.

      “By the Virgin! yes. You were the little clerk who sat so mum in the corner, and then cried fy on the gleeman. What hast in the scrip?”

      “Nought of any price.”

      “How can I tell that, clerk? Let me see.”

      “Not I.”

      “Fool! I could pull you limb from limb like a pullet. What would you have? Hast forgot that we are alone, far from all men? How can your clerkship help you? Wouldst lose scrip and life too?”

      “I will part with neither without a fight.”

      “A fight, quotha? A fight betwixt spurred cock and new-hatched chicken! Thy fighting days may soon be over.”

      “Hadst asked me in the name of charity I would have given freely,” cried Alleyne. “As it stands, not one farthing shall you have with my free will, and when I see my brother the Socman of Minstead, he will raise hue and cry from vill to vill[100], from hundred to hundred, until you are taken as a common robber and a scourge to the country.”

      The outlaw sank his club. “The Socman’s brother!” he gasped. “Now, by the keys of Peter! I had rather that hand withered and tongue was palsied ere I had struck or miscalled you. If you are the Socman’s brother you are one of the right side, I warrant, for all your clerkly dress.”

      “His brother I am,” replied Alleyne. “But even if I were not, is that reason why you should molest me on the king’s ground?”

      “I give not the pip of an apple for king or for noble,” cried the serf passionately. “Ill have I had from them, and ill I shall repay them. I am a good friend to my friends, and, by the Virgin! an evil foeman to my foes.”

      “And therefore the worst of foemen to thyself,” said Alleyne. “But I pray you since you seem to know him, to point out to me the shortest path to my brother’s house.”

      The serf was about to reply, when the clear ringing call of a bugle burst from the wood close behind them, and Alleyne caught sight for an instant of the dun side and white breast of a lordly stag glancing swiftly betwixt the distant tree trunks. A minute later came the shaggy deer-hounds, a dozen or fourteen of them, running on a hot scent, with nose to earth and tail in air. As they streamed past the silent forest around broke suddenly into loud life, with galloping of hoofs, crackling of brushwood, and the short sharp cries of the hunters. Close behind the pack rode a fourrier and a yeoman-pricker, whooping on the laggards and encouraging the leaders, in the shrill half-French jargon which was the language of venery and woodcraft. Alleyne was still gazing after them, listening to the loud “Hyke-a-Bayard! Hyke-a-Pomers! Hyke-a-Lebryt!” with which they called upon their favourite hounds, when a group of horsemen crashed out through the underwood at the very spot where the serf and he were standing.

      The one who led was a man between fifty and sixty years of age, war-worn and weather-beaten, with a broad thoughtful forehead and eyes which shone brightly from under his fierce and overhung brows. His beard, streaked thickly with grey, bristled forward from his chin, and spoke of a passionate nature, while the long finely-cut face and firm mouth marked the leader of men. His figure was erect and soldierly, and he rode his horse with the careless grace of a man whose life had been spent in the saddle. In common garb, his masterful face and flashing eye would have marked him as one who was born to rule; but now, with his silken tunic powdered with golden fleurs-de-lis[101], his velvet mantle lined with the royal minever, and the lions of England stamped in silver upon his harness, none could fail to recognise the noble Edward, most warlike and powerful of all the long line of fighting monarchs who had ruled the Anglo-Norman race. Alleyne doffed hat and bowed head at the sight of him, but the serf folded his hands and leaned them upon his cudgel, looking with little love at the knot of nobles and knights-in-waiting who rode behind the king.

      “Ha!” cried Edward, reining up for an instant his powerful black steed, “Le cerf est passé? Non? Ici, Brocas; tu parles Anglais[102].”

      “The deer, clowns?” said a hard-visaged, swarthy-faced man, who rode at the king’s elbow. “If ye have headed

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