CHAPTER II.

A BURST FOR FREEDOM.

The crossbow was audibly rattling on Dickon's shoulder and his knees

smote together after hearing what the old archer had told him about the

so-called sorcerer. He looked hurriedly behind, with perhaps some vague

thoughts of flight, but the sight of the fierce horsemen at his heels

scattered these.

The boy plodded miserably forward, catching only here and there a stray

word of what the archer further said. This was to the effect that the

place they were pushing toward--dread Camber Dane--had been the home of

the mad baron, Lord Tasktorn, for many years. Now for other many years

his equally mad younger son, Sir John Camber, had been in possession of

the estate.

A gruesome and awful man, by all accounts, was this Sir John, who lived

alone with uncanny, dwarfish servant-people. It was said that he

conjured gold and jewels out of the unholy flames he kindled, and was

accurst of God and the church.

Little enough of this did Dickon comprehend, for the idea of an

alchemist was new to him; but the terrors which the archer painted were

none the less real to the lad.

He fancied that the air in the tangled copse through which they were

now pushing their upward path already bore the fatal taint of magic. He

strove to breathe as little of it as he could, and thus to avoid its

spell.

The horses had been left behind, and their riders were now on foot like

the rest.

Dickon looked anxiously about for some offer of escape. Then affrighted

visions of what death really was rose before his eyes--all with

startling suddenness taking on the likeness of his father, lying

gasping on the straw of the squalid forge. It horrified his senses.

He stumbled blindly on with the rest, not seeing where or with whom he

was going, and ever and again receiving blows from the armed men behind

him, which he scarce noted.

All at once they all stood forth on the edge of a promontory. Beneath

them spread out a picture of almost enchanted loveliness, with park and

lawn, with garden, orchard, and lake. In the centre of all was a

peaceful mansion, turreted and gabled for beauty rather than defence.

Engirdling all was a broad oaken zone of forest. Midwinter though it

was, the sylvan prospect seemed to speak of spring, and grass and trees

alike were green.

As he looked down upon this scene, Dickon felt the fog of fright

lifting from his mind. Somehow the notion dawned upon him that if death

by a sorcerer's wiles awaited him here in this vale, it must be a

gracious and almost pleasant death to fit the place.

His terrors left him,--as strangely swift as they had come,--and in

their place there rose a curious sensation of regret that so sweet and

goodly a home as this should be ravaged.

This was, however, too novel a thought to take easy root, and he forgot

it again as they began creeping downward along the narrow, shelving

path to the park. The marauding party were sheltered from view the

whole length of this path by a hedge the height of a man's waist; and

once the bottom was reached, their way led through a wood where bushes

and saplings grew thickly in the shadow of giant oaks.

When at last the end of this had been won, they were close to the rear

of a small stone building which they had not seen until now. An arrow's

flight away was the great house, also in plain view--and there grave

things were going forward.

As Dickon gazed out, a great cloud of black smoke burst forth from the

upper window in one of the towers of this mansion, and through the

smoke he saw a dark object hurled outward, and whirl swiftly to the

ground.

As it fell and lay sprawled shapelessly there, the lad realized that it

was a human being. Then, in a dazed way, he understood that he was

witnessing the sacking of a manor-house.

Sir Watty and his troop were already inside, and from the narrow doors

and windows faint noises proceeded--screams of terror, curses of rage,

and the clashing of weapons. Through a little postern door two of the

Egswith marauders were thus early dragging out spoil in hangings,

armor, and russet and murray gowns.

At the back of the mansion, to judge by the sounds, there was fighting

in the open air not less fierce than that within.

At sight of the booty issuing from the postern, Rawly uttered a roar of

greedy exultation, and Dickon, in the twinkling of an eye, found

himself bereft of all his late companions, who followed Rawly in a

headlong race for the scene of plunder.

The old archer did hold aloof for a brief space, calling out to Dickon

that in a minute, or two at the utmost, all these would assuredly be

stricken dead; but when no such thing happened, and more costly stuffs

appeared to view in the hands of the ravishers, he threw off his fears

of magic, and ran forward at the top of his speed to join in the work

of plunder.

Such combat as had been needed was now at an end. Sir Watty--unless,

indeed, he had other visits on his mind--might have safely wrought all

this mischief with the fifth part of his force. Dickon marvelled

vaguely that so many men had been brought for such paltry fighting--in

ignorance that his lord's true danger lay on the highroad, returning

with his spoils.

Why the lad had not gone forward with his fellows he could not have

told. There was no reason why the thought of plunder should be

repugnant to him.

His whole life had been spent among men who lived by plunder, and only

in the dimmest fashion did he comprehend that there were people able to

command horses and armor who lived by other means.

Yet he made no motion to join the others, and in the curious interest

with which he stared upon the scene before him, had wholly forgotten

the crossbow under his arm.

As he looked a swaying, shouting knot of men-at-arms appeared at the

chief door of the mansion, dragging forward, with great buffetings and

scuffling, a person whom Dickon saw to be, despite his struggles and

disorder, one of dignity and presence.

As they haled him out upon the sward, and he stood erect among them,

the lad noted that he was tall and past middle age, with the white face

which goes with gentle pursuits, and that he wore a blue side-gown with

fur upon it, and had a chain of gold about his neck.

His brow was bleeding from a blow with an iron gauntlet, but he held

himself straight and proudly. Now that they had ceased to buffet him,

he seemed to be putting questions to them which they answered by ribald

shouts. Instinctively Dickon left the wood and began to cross the open

space, that he might the better hear the gentle questions and the rude

answers.

Sir Watty Curdle came suddenly out from the door, and made his way with

swift, striding steps to the centre of this strange group. The shouts

of the soldiers rose the higher for a moment, and then ceased

altogether, to make silence for what their dumb show gave to be a talk

between the robber-knight and the gentleman.

Dickon had not won near enough to catch even the sound of their voices,

when the parley came to an abrupt ending.

Sir Watty all at once lifted his mailed hand, and with it struck the

other man a violent blow in the face. As the gowned and unarmed man

reeled, a soldier with his pole-axe completed his master's work. The

stricken gentleman fell heavily, sidelong, and two others on the

instant pitched upon the body to tear off the chain and furred robe.

While he stood watching this, Dickon felt his heart leap upward, and

then sink with a great sickening. He stood as if turned to stone for a

moment; and when sense returned to him, he had unconsciously brought

his crossbow forward and fitted a bolt in it, and begun to draw the

string home. To do what? He never knew.

Some soldiers were running in his direction across the sward, sounding

the halloo of the chase, and pointing their weapons toward him. His

first thought--that their approach meant an attack upon him--bred

promptly the resolve to die as hard as might be.

He set his heels firmly, and again began to draw his bow; but then it

became apparent that these running men strove to call his attention to

some other matter, for they themselves were headed now obliquely away

from him.

Turning, he saw that two persons, an old man and a boy, were fleeing

for their lives toward the wood. They had come from the small house

near by, and might have won safety by this time if his presence there

had not forced them to bend in their course.

Without an instant's thought he began running after them at his utmost

speed. It seemed to him that he had never moved with half the swiftness

before which now lightened his heels.

At the very edge of the forest, the old man staggered and tripped upon

his long gown, and fell face to earth, so that the foremost of his

pursuers tumbled over him. Dickon had a momentary glimpse of a reverend

white head and long, snowy beard kicked on the ground among iron boots,

and of a half-dozen furious men fighting over what seemed already to be

a lifeless body.

Then he heard a hoarse voice cry out, "The lad has the jewels! After

him! After him!" and two of these robbers plunged on in headlong

pursuit of the fugitive boy.

What Dickon had seen thus swiftly had served to slacken his pace for

but a moment, and now that he gave chase again he was nearer to the

child victim than were the others.

As he rushed through the thick tangle of woodland, he could see that

the boy ahead bore under his arm a casket, the weight of which so wore

upon his frail strength that his flight could last but a little longer.

Then it came that Dickon was between the strange lad and his pursuers,

being very close to both, and was turned in hot resolve to face these

murderers, with his crossbow strung and levelled.

It seemed to cover only a blinded and whirling instant of time--this

struggle which enveloped him. Dickon sent his square-headed bolt with a

twang! straight into the throat of him who, panting and red-eyed, led

the chase. As this one threw up his knees and pitched forward, the

young archer sprang fiercely over the body, and fell with the fury of

despair upon the other.

There was a terrible brief wrestle upon the frosted leaves and moss.

Then the second ruffian lay suddenly still.

Dickon stood in trembling amaze for a little, staring down upon these

twain, whom he had in a frenzied second put beyond further combat. He

shook like any winter leaf as he looked, and his legs bent beneath

him--for this foremost dead man was Morgan, the very bone and sinew of

Egswith's dread band.

To be burned alive were the lightest vengeance for such a trick as

this.

Dickon now thought of flight. Turning in haste, he saw before him the

boy with the casket, standing at the entrance to a rocky glade just

beyond, and looking out upon him with a white face. He moved swiftly to

him, and laid hold upon the box.

"Speed for your life!" he hissed; and then the pair, with no further

word, set forth in a breathless stumbling race through the forest.

Before long the echoes of savage shouts at the rear rang over the

thicket, but the hunted lads only shivered in silence and pressed on.

Then the cries died away, and there was no sound in all the woodland

save the rustle of their hurried footsteps.

At last, when they had crossed a second valley, and had arrived at a

hill upon which tall fir trees grew sparsely, and the ground was spread

with a dense carpet of dry spines, the strange boy threw himself to the

earth.

"Further I may not stir," he groaned, and put his head down upon the

soft pine-needles in utter weakness.

Dickon lifted the lad in his arms, and bore him a little way to a nook

where some stunted firs, bunched close in a ring around an ancestral

stump, offered shelter. There, when he had disposed his companion in

comfort, and stripped off his own fretting haubergeon, Dickon had time

to think and to look about him.

The lad whose life he had saved in so terrible a fashion was slender

and small of stature, yet had a face which to Dickon seemed full of the

wisdom of years. It was a pale and girlish face, with thin, fine

lineaments and blue eyes from which shone knowledge and swift sense.

The brow was strangely high and white. Dickon had seen such once or

twice among the younger of the preaching road-friars. The long hair

which fell in two partings from it was of the color and softness of

flax. His thin legs were cased in some light hose which Dickon held to

be of silk--puny enough stuff for such a rude journey as they were

making, and now much torn and stained.

His body was covered with a tight slashed tunic of a brown velvet. His

cap--if he set out with one--had been lost in the flight.

The boy seemed to desire no talk, for he lay with his ear to the earth,

breathing heavily, and so Dickon squatted himself on his haunches, and

pried open the cover of the heavy casket he had borne so far.

Instead of jewels, as he had looked to find, there was naught but a

block of leather, ornamented with raised strips of velvet and gilded

lines, which wholly filled the box. When Dickon lifted it out from its

encasing, this leather top turned as on a hinge; and fastened below it

at the back were seen many folds of parchment, one upon the other, all

covered with black markings strange to the eye.

Dickon gazed in wonder at the queer figures upon the parchment. Then

his slow mind recalled the archers talk of magic, and he let the thing

drop, open and with crushed pages, flat to the ground.

The lad sprang up at this with a murmur of alarm, and lifted the fallen

object, solicitously smoothing out the parchments and shutting the

leather over them. Then he reached for the casket, and put it inside

again, eying his companion with vexed regard meanwhile.

"It is ill to mar what thou canst not mend," he said sharply.

"There are more bolts to my bow, an you mean me harm," Dickon answered,

with a stout voice enough, but much uncertainty within. He took up his

weapon to point the words.

The lad in velvet laughed. "What harm could be in me?" he said, and

laughed again. "Bolts and bows, forsooth! Why, thou couldst spoil me

with thy thumb." And still he laughed on.

"Yon leathern gear--is it goodly?" Dickon pointed to the casket.

"What--my Troilus?" Looking into Dickon's honest face, he understood

his fears, and answered gently: "Nay, ease thy mind. It is a book--a

book not written, but made with types. It tells to the skilled eye a

brave story--but not braver, good fellow, than to-day's tale of thee.

Art a stout carle, by the rood! Who is thy master?"

Dickon bent his chin upon his throat to overlook the device stitched

upon his breast, but did not reply. A formless idea crossed his brain

that perchance one might live in forests without a lord. It was worth

thinking upon.

"And by what mercy camest thou at my heels?" the lad pursued.

Then, as these words brought up before him the awful scene at the

woodland's edge, he fell to shuddering and choked with sobs.

"My good old master,--to die thus foully,--oh, woe! woe!" he moaned,

and put down his head again.

Dickon pricked up his ears at the word. "Had you then a master, too?"

he asked, and on the instant there sprouted in his heart a kindlier

feeling for the lad. They were more of a common clay, it seemed, than

he had thought.

"But you have no badge!" he commented.

"Badge? Badge?" the boy said hesitatingly, and Dickon noted now a

strangeness of sound in his speech which, the while he had held him to

be of rank, had passed unheard.

"What means it--badge?" asked the lad; and when Dickon pointed to the

two hares on his own breast, the stranger burst again into laughter. A

droll boy this, surely, who could be so merry and so tearful all in the

same breath.

"Nay, I wear no mans collar," he said at last; and then, in pity for

Dickon's perplexity, explained. "The good old man, Geraldus Hansenius,

was my master only in love and courtesy, and in that he taught me in

all the deep mysteries of his craft.

"He brought me from my own land, and here, where Sir John gave us honor

and fair lodgment, we printed the book. And now, lo! in this short hour

Sir John and Geraldus are foully done to death, and Camber Dane is

despoiled--and the Troilus and I are hiding for our lives, like hares

in a thicket. Ach Gott! Ach Gott!"

At this there were more moans.

"No hare am I," said Dickon, stoutly, "but if they try me, more like a

wolf. Pick me out these threads."

He knelt beside the lad, who with a bodkin from his doublet ripped one

by one the hated lines that had shown Dickon to be evil Sir Watty's

man.

Then Dickon stood upright, and filled himself with a great, deep

breath. The new sense of liberty seemed to raise his stature and swell

his girth. He took off his iron sallet, and shook his free head

proudly, nearer to the sky than it had ever before been lifted.

"We will live in the greenwood," he said in bold, boyish confidence.

CHAPTER III.

A STRANGE CHRISTMAS EVE.

When two nights and two days had passed, Dickon and Andreas found

themselves on the furthermost edge of the forest. Here skirted the

woodland a highroad which neither had seen before. Beyond this were a

rolling moor country and distant mountains, the sight of which was

strange to them; but house of any kind there was none.

When their eager gaze, sweeping all the prospect, had made certain that

no habitation was to be seen, Dickon groaned deeply, and little Andreas

wept outright.

As they stood thus, Andreas clenched his hands at his breast, lifting

his white face upward toward the bare boughs. Then he closed his eyes,

and staggering a single step, fell forward to the ground, and lay there

on his face like a log.

Dickon lifted his comrade in his arms, and bore him back into the

thicket. Out in the open where the two youths had viewed the highroad

the earth was frozen stiff, and snow lay thin-spread upon it; but

behind them, on the path they had made, lay warmer nooks sheltered by

tangled shrubs.

To the first of these Dickon pushed his way, and putting the lad softly

down, began gathering dry, dead leaves by armfuls and piling them over

the senseless body. On these he laid branches, and then again more

leaves, until only the boyish, sleeping face met the air.

Now he made another journey to the outer place which they had won, and

gleaning from the ground the three things he had left there, brought

them back to where the lad lay under his leaves, and put them down

beside him. These were the crossbow, the book in its casket, and the

mangled carcass of a boar which he had killed, but had eaten of more to

his harm than good, since there was no fire with which to cook the

meat.

Dickon looked down to his friend, and saw that the boy was awake, and

sick unto death. Cold and hunger and the toil of wild wandering had

dealt harshly with even Dickon's own tough English flesh and blood.

They were killing the fragile lad from foreign parts.

"Do you get warmth?" he asked dolefully, as he had asked scores of

other times.

For answer the lad closed his eyes and shook his head in weakness.

Then Dickon knelt down and did a thing strange to all his knowledge of

customs. He kissed the pale forehead which lay half-hid among the

leaves. Then, as if in shame, he sprang to his feet.

"Bide you here till I come," he said, and turning, strode off toward

the open, with the crossbow under his arm.

For warmth's sake and the peril which brooded behind him, he swung

himself forward at a swift pace down the highroad. The air and the

movement kindled his blood a little.

A full league it seemed to him he must have tramped, over barren

moorland and through winding defiles with steep, unfriendly sides of

bare rock, before he came to anything that spoke of human habitation.

Then, as the skies were darkening into twilight, he entered unawares

into the deeper shadows of a great wall, gray and forbidding, rising

above the highway like a part of the boulders themselves.

At the base of this, as if entering upon the heart of the earth, was a

small, black door of wood, framed in frowning stone.

On this door of the monastery Dickon pounded with his fists, and with

the handle of his weapon, and presently there came a sound as of bolts

withdrawn. The door opened half-way, and a chalk-faced young friar in

white gown and hood stood before him.

"Enter," this spectral figure said, and trembled with the cold.

"Nay, fire is what I seek," stammered Dickon, almost in fright at the

ghost-like form before him, and at the strange sound of a tinkling bell

echoing from the rocks overhead.

"Canst not wait till thou art dead for that?" the white-robed phantom

said, in tones of earthly vexation. He would have shut the door at

this, but that Dickon sprang forward, thrust his bow against the inner

frame, and clutched the friar by the arm.

"Fire! fire!" he cried. "Give me that to kindle fire, or I kill

you--like the others!"

The monk stood stock-still, and curled the thin corners of his lips in

scorn at this rude boy, and held him with his bright, sneering gaze.

Dickon looked into these sharp, cold eyes, and felt himself a noisy

fool.

"Nay, father," he stumbled on, pleadingly, "if I get not a fire, he

dies!"

"Hast thy head full of dead men, seemingly," the young Cistercian

replied.

He cast his glance down over this rough visitor, and noting the

blood-splashes upon his hose, lifted his brows in wrathful inquiry.

Then he snatched up the crucifix from the end of the chain at his

girdle, and thrust it swiftly into Dickon's face.

"Who art thou, churl?" he demanded. "Whose blood is this?"

[Illustration: "WHOSE BLOOD IS THIS?"]

Dickon's nerve sank into his shoes.

"A boar that I have slain, good father," he answered in a mumbling

whimper, "and lack fire wherewith to roast it; and the raw flesh is ill

food, and he can eat naught of it, and gets no warmth, and must die if

I win not a fire."

At this the monk softened. He led Dickon into the outer porch, and

gleaned the purport of his story. Only Dickon said nothing of the book

or of the two men he had killed.

"Fire thou shalt have," the young monk said, more kindly, when Dickon's

tale was finished. "But first go through the gates before thee to the

hall, and take all thou wilt of meat and ale. None will deny thee. 'Tis

the eve of holy Christmas, and though we fast, thou and thy kind may

feed in welcome."

"It is only fire I seek," said Dickon, doggedly, though all his vitals

clamored in revolt against the speech. "Food I will none till he hath

supped."

"So be it," said the monk, and left Dickon alone under the groined

archway in the growing darkness.

Presently he came again, and put flint and steel and tinder into the

lad's hand. He gave him also a leathern bottle stopped with wax and a

little cheese wrapped in fine straw.

"Bear these along," he said. "It is the Christmas eve. Peace be with

you," and so motioned the boy away.

Dickon's tongue was not used to words of thanks, and he had turned in

silence to go out when the monk called to him, and then came forward to

the outer door.

"You were to kill me--like 'the others,'" he said, with a grim smile

curling his lips. "What others?"

"Two of Sir Watty's men, whom I smote down as they would have fallen

upon _him_," said Dickon, pride struggling with apprehension.

The monk smiled at this outright, and departing again abruptly,

returned with a pasty in a dish, enfolded in cloths.

"Now God be with you!" he said, heartily. "Hither bring your strange

gossip on the morrow, if he find his legs."

Once outside the rock-girt postern, Dickon set to running, his arms

full with the burden of the friar's gifts, and his heart all aglow with

joy. It was a wearisome enough ascent, and the darkness of even was

drawing ever closer over the earth, and the lad's empty stomach cried

aloud at every furlong for food; but still he pressed on.

When at last he had gained the point on the road whence his quest had

begun, the light had altogether failed. Then only he struck his flint,

and set fire to some leaves. From these he kindled a knot of dry

branches, and with this for a torch pushed his way into the woods.

"Andreas," he called out, when at last he stood above his friend, "here

is fire and food!"

The white face among the leaves was the color of the snow he had left

behind him. The eyes were half-open, but no answering light came into

them. The boy lay as if dead.

With a startled cry Dickon let fall his spoils, and dropping to his

knees, lifted the other's head up against his waist. It twisted inertly

upon the thin neck and hung forward. Was life truly gone?

Like one in a daze, Dickon laid the boy down again among the leaves,

and rose to his feet, still holding the burning sticks in his hand. The

flames came painfully near to his flesh before he started into sense

again.

Then he swiftly built a fire in a cleft among the rocks at the end of

the little hollow, piling dry wood and leaves upon it till the blaze

lighted up everything about. This done, he knocked off the waxen cover

of his leather bottle, cut out the stopper, and kneeling once more, put

its mouth to the dying lad's lips.

Strange tears came into his eyes as, after only a brief moment, those

of his friend opened in truth, and gazed wonderingly upward at the

luminous volume of ascending smoke. Then the slight frame shuddered

piteously with a recurring chill, and the dread sleep fell upon it once

more.

Dickon dragged him to the fire, piling leaves behind for support, and

holding the lad's hands almost into the flames, so desperate did the

strait seem to be. Then he stripped off his own leathern jacket, and

wrapped it about Andreas.

He heaped fresh fuel on the fire, he rubbed the slender limbs for

warmth with his rough hands, he forced more of the wine-drink down the

boy's throat--all at once, as it were, in a frenzy of resolve that

death should at all hazards be fought off.

And so it came about, for presently Andreas was sitting propped up upon

the mound of leaves, smiling faintly with pleasure at the new warmth in

his veins, and sucking bare the last bird-bones from the pie.

Dickon gnawed ravenously upon the smoky and half-cooked piece of tough

meat he had cut from the ham of the boar, and watched the sweet

spectacle of his friend restored to life, in an abstraction of dumb

joy.

Andreas lifted his hand in air, and uttered an exclamation of surprise.

"It is Christmas eve!" he said. "I had forgotten!"

"So said the friar," Dickon mumbled between mouthfuls, tearing at the

food meanwhile with his teeth. "He was in two minds about having me

flogged, but for that. The monks have a fear of the king, they say, and

on the days he marks for them durst not break bread for themselves.

Thus this friar must needs fast to-day--so he said. How could the king

know, if he slipped in some food while-times? He hath not been in these

parts this many years."

"It is not the king, Dickon," answered Andreas. "A greater than any

king ordereth these matters."

"Aye, the lord of Warwick," said Dickon. "My father rode with him, in

far countries, when he was lusty. But the king slew him years agone, in

a battle by London town. Wist you not that?"

"Tut, tut," the lad in ragged velvet made reply, smiling at first, and

then more gravely. "Your Warwick is dust and bones, as every man shall

be, the king not less than the meanest knave. But God does not die, and

He ruleth all things."

"Sir Watty swore ever by Him," said Dickon. "But He hath not once set

foot in Shropshire, in my time."

Andreas lifted himself at this, with eyes marvelling at such ignorance.

"Oh, Dickon lad, thou hast the very mother's milk of learning to find

thy way to," he cried, and crossed his knees by the ruddy blaze,

tailor-fashion, to begin.

The story that he told to Dickon was such a one as never Christian

child in these times needs to hear, but rather draws in from every

source, unconsciously, like speech and the shapings of thought. But to

Dickon it was brand new, since at Egswith no godly man had ever shown

his face. He listened to it all with open mouth and brain.

As for Andreas, he grew presently conscious of fatigue, and lay back

upon his couch of leaves as his narrative unfolded. Then, the instant

spur of food and warmth becoming spent, his voice grew fainter, and in

the returning weakness his thoughts wandered from the thread of the

sublime story to tender memories of how it had been illumined and

decked out in his old German home.

"Ach, lieber Tannenbaum!" he murmured, with the firelight in his dreamy

eyes. "It was a sight to live for, Dickon--the beautiful fir tree

before you, with burning candles fastened in among the branches, and

Christmas gifts hanging underneath,--every little minute something new

you found,--and father, mother, brothers, sisters, all in the happy

ring around the tree, with joyful songs and good wishes--woe! woe! I

shall never see it again!"

"That thou shalt, and hundreds of them," said Dickon, cheerily.

But Andreas shook his head in sadness, and gazed into the crackling

blaze as though it were a tomb.

"Old Geraldus and I would have had a tree," he sighed at last. "Each

year since we came out from Augsburg we made us one, and sang the dear

old German songs, and gave each other gifts. And this year we were both

to give this goodly 'Troilus' to Sir John--and lo! they are both

murdered, dead, and I am following them, close at their heels--and

'Troilus' will come to naught. And never had more cunning and shapely

work been done, not even in Augsburg!"

"Is it far--that 'Owg'--what name do you call it?" asked Dickon. "As

far as London town?"

The lad smiled faintly from where he lay. "It is across the sea, and

many days' journey still."

"And does the king come there oftener than into Shropshire?"

"Dull boy! There your king durst never come. It is not his country.

There is an emperor, and then a Wittelsbach Duke, but even these may

not come into Augsburg if the burghers say them nay. The tongue is

different there from yours, and so, glory be to the saints, are the

manners, too. There learning flourishes, and men are gentle, and books

like poor Troilus yonder are monthly made by dozens."

"Wherefore came you hither, then?" queried Dickon, with rude islander

logic.

"It was the madness in my master's head. He deemed that here he should

be welcome, bringing a new craft to make knowledge common. But these be

beasts here in Shropshire, not men. They desire not books, but only

blood and battle and red meat."

"Men come by knowledge to their hurt," said Dickon. "There was a clerk

turned thief in Egswith with Sir Watty, and he was skilled to fashion

marks on paper so wise men might know their meaning--and him they

hanged at Rednal for a rogue four winters syne."

"For that he was a robber, and no true clerk," retorted Andreas.

Dickon looked into the fire for answer, and then at the black, starless

sky overhead. He rose, and busied himself for a time in gathering fresh

fuel, and then in roughly wattling some side shelter at the back of the

bed of leaves. Some vagrant flakes of snow sifted through the branches

above, and he reflected upon the chances of making a roof on the

morrow. Or doubtless it would be better to go farther back, and build

more securely there.

He put the question to Andreas by way of talk, restoring the fire

meanwhile. The German boy smiled in wonder.

"Why, on the morrow, if strength comes back to me, hie we to the good

white friars. They bade you come, and me, too!"

Dickon's face clouded over.

"Nay, I'm for the greenwood," he said stubbornly. "I will wear no man's

collar more, nor sleep under roof. To be free, here in the open, it

maketh a new man of me. And so, an you leave me, here I abide alone, or

in these parts."

"How should I leave thee, Dickon?" said the other, softly. "That could

not be. But freedom lies not alone out under the skies, in wind and

cold. Was any other more free than I, with my old master? Come, thou

shalt be ruled by me--and we will make our way out from these ruffian

parts together, and somewhere we shall light upon a gentle patron, and

there I will carve new types and build a press, and thy stout arms

shall turn the screw, and I will teach thee learning, and----"

He broke off all at once, and gazed wistfully upward at the mounting

volume of smoke and snapping sparks for a long time in silence. Dickon

looked on him, speechless but with great things dawning confusedly in

his head.

CHAPTER IV.

UP IN THE WORLD.

Save the crackling of flame, and the small sound of branches overhead

that were swayed a little by the draught from the fire on the forest

floor, Dickon heard nothing while he waited for Andreas to finish the

matter of which he had been speaking.

For the rude smithy-bred boy there was little meaning in the other's

promise to teach him learning. No more meaning was there for Dickon in

the young scholar's craving for types and a press to begin printing

anew.

But the promise that Andreas would not part from him lingered in

Dickon's ears, and uplifted his heart as he waited reverentially to

hear again the gentle, convinced, and loving accents of the German

youth.

At last Andreas spoke--as if he had not paused, and yet with a strange

new wailing weakness in his voice:--

"And if the saints willed, thus might we win our way back to Augsburg.

But that may never be, for I shall die here, here where I lie, and thou

wilt turn to wild beast or robber when I am gone, and brave, goodly

Augsburg will press on, leading all men, with never a thought of poor

little me, dead here in the forest."

Dickon would have spoken in homely protest, but the change on his

friend's face scared him to dumbness. Not even the flame-light could

make it ruddy now. In the eyes there was a dimmed, far-away look which

chilled Dickon's blood.

"Aye, when I lie forgotten here,"--the thin, saddened voice went on in

increasing slowness,--"there the old gray walls and tiled gables will

be, with the storks making their nests in the spring, and the convent

boys singing at daybreak in the streets, and the good housewives

stopping in the market-place on their way home from mass, and the smell

of new grass and blossoms in the air ... and when Christmas comes I

shall not know it ... these eyes shall not look again on the

Tannenbaum. Woe! woe!"

"Is that the tree?" asked Dickon, some impulse to words and action

stirring vaguely in his frightened heart.

"Aye," groaned Andreas, "the beautiful tree with candles blazing on its

branches and shining gifts." He followed on in a weak murmuring of

foreign words, seemingly without meaning.

Dickon bent one intent, long glance upon this childish, waxen face

before him. Then he plucked a burning bough from the fire, and without

a word pushed the bushes aside and plunged into the outer darkness of

the forest.

After some time he returned, bearing an armful of rushes. He warmed

himself for a moment, and then, seated so that Andreas might not

observe his work, began with his knife to cut these down into lengths

of a span, and to strip off all but a winding rim of their outer cover.

Then he hacked with his knife into the frozen boar's carcass. Cutting

out portions of white, hard fat, he melted these a little at the fire,

and then rolled them thinly between his palms about the trimmed rushes.

This done, he flayed off a part of the boar's skin, scorched off the

bristles, rubbed it all with ashes, and spreading it over his sallet,

sliced it into a rude semblance of fine thongs.

Then, still uttering no word, he was gone again, once more bearing with

him a lighted torch.

In front of Andreas, but to one side, as he lay in half trance and

utter faintness watching the smoke, there rose at two rods' distance

the dark outline of a fir tree, the lower parts of which were hidden by

shrubs.

Suddenly the sick boy's gaze was diverted to the dim black cone of this

tree, where a reddish radiance seemed spreading upward from the tangle

underneath. Then a sparkling spot of white light made itself visible

high up among the dusky branches--then another--and another. At last

nearly a dozen there were, all brightly glowing like stars brought

near.

Andreas gazed in languid marvelling at the development of this strange

thing--as one quietly contemplates miracles in sleep. It seemed but a

natural part of his dying vision of Augsburg--the Tannenbaum making

itself weirdly real before his fading sight.

The rosy smoke parted to shape a frame for this mystic picture in its

centre, and Andreas saw it all--the twinkling lights, the deep-shadowed

lines of boughs, the engirdling wreaths of fiery vapor--as a part of

the dreamland whose threshold he stood upon. And his heart sang softly

within him at the sight.

Then all at once he awoke from the dream; for Dickon was standing over

him, flushed with a rude satisfaction in his work, and saying:--

"Gifts had I none to hang, Andreas, save it were the bottle and what is

left of the cheese. Look your fill at it, for boar's fat never yet was

tallow, and the rushes are short-lived."

The dream mists cleared from the German boy's brain.

"Oh, it is thine!" he faintly murmured, in reviving comprehension.

"Thou hast made it--for me!"

Dickon glanced out to where, in his eyes, some sorry dips guttered for

a brief space on a tree-top. More than one of the lights was already

flickering to collapse in the breeze.

"You said you never would see one again," he urged triumphantly.

"Belike your speech about dying was no whit truer."

Andreas had no further words, but lifted his hand weakly upward, and

Dickon knelt down and took it in his own hard palms.

Thus the two boys kept silence for a period--silence which spoke many

things to both--and looked at the little rush-dips fluttering on the

boughs against the curtain of black night.

Of a sudden, the stillness which had tenderly enwrapped them was

roughly broken. If there had been warning sounds, the lads had missed

them--for their hearts almost stopped beating with the shock that now

befell.

A violent crushing of the bushes, a chance clank of metal--and two

fierce-faced bowmen in half-armor stood in the firelight before their

frightened gaze.

"Stir not--on your lives!" cried one of these strange intruders, with

the cold menace of a pole-axe in his mailed hand. "What mummery is

this?"

Somehow it dawned upon Dickon's consciousness that these warlike men,

for all their terrifying mien, were as much frightened in their way as

he was. This perception came doubtless from the lessons of a life spent

with bold soldiers who yet trembled at sight of a will o' the wisp. He

kept his jaw from knocking together with an effort, and asked as if at

his ease:

"What mean you, good sir? No mummery is here."

"There! there!" shouted the other man-at-arms, pointing with his spear

to where the rush-lights--or what remained of them--twinkled fitfully

in the tree.

"Oh, that," said Dickon, with nonchalance. "It is a trick of foreign

parts, made by me to gladden the heart of this poor lad, my master, who

lies here sore stricken with sickness. Wist you not it is Christmas?

This is our Tonnybow, meet for such a time."

The two men looked sharply at the boys, and then, after a murmured

consultation, one turned on his heel and disappeared. The other,

espying the leathern bottle, grew friendlier, and lifted it to his lips

by an undivided motion from the ground. Then he said, drawing nearer to

the blaze and heaving a long, comforted breath:--

"Whose man art thou?"

"This is my master," replied Dickon, with his thumb toward Andreas,

"who was most foully beset by robbers, and is like now to die if he win

not help and shelter."

"That shall be as my lord duke willeth," said the soldier.

As he spoke, the sound of more clanking armor fell upon the air. In a

moment a half-dozen mailed men stood at the entrance to the copse,

gazing in with curious glances.

Behind them were men with flaring torches, and in their front was the

stately figure of a young knight, tall and proudly poised. A red cloak

and fur tippet were cast over his shining corselet.

This young man had a broad brow under his hanging hair, and grave,

piercing eyes, which passed over Dickon as mere clay, and fastened a

shrewd gaze on the lad in velvet.

"It is the German gift-tree," he said to those behind him, whom Dickon

saw now to be gentles and no common soldiers. "I have heard oft of

this, but looked not to see it first in Shropshire. What do you here?"

he asked at Dickon, rather than of him, and with such a flash of sharp,

commanding eyes that the lad's tongue thickened, and he could make no

answer.

Andreas it was who spoke, when words failed Dickon, in a voice firmer

than before, and lifting himself on his elbow.

"He saved my life, my lord," he said. "And I am dying, I think, and

this tree the good fellow tricked out to please my sick fancy. And I

pray you, for a dead lad's sake, have a care for him when I am gone."

The knight, with the promise of a smile on his straight lips, looked

from eager, fragile Andreas to burly, hang-dog Dickon, and back again.

"Art from the German countries?" he asked. "And how here, of all spots

under the sky?"

"I am Andreas Mayer, from Augsburg," said the lad, "driven hence by

robbers from the house of Sir John Camber, who was slain along with my

good master, Geraldus Hansenius."

The young knight took a hasty step forward, and peered down upon the

lad.

"Geraldus of the types and press--the printer?" he asked hurriedly.

"And thou art skilled in his craft?"

"This is even more my handiwork than his," replied Andreas, with a

boy's pride, reaching out for the casket containing his beloved

"Troilus."

Dickon undid the cover, and handed out the volume to the young noble,

who took it with a swift gesture, and turned over here and there a

page, bending the book to the firelight and uttering exclamations of

delight. Suddenly he closed the book, and gave it back to Dickon to

replace in the casket.

"I thank thee, Sir Francis," he said to one of those behind him. "But

for thy wonder at the lights in yon tree, we had passed this treasure

by. Ho there, Poynter! Fashion me a litter on the moment, and we will

bear this lad onward to the abbey as we go. Let some one ride on to say

I am belated; hasten the others."

Then he took the precious volume from its casket once more, and mused

upon its pages again, and spoke of them to the gentlemen closest behind

him. Again and again he put pointed questions to young Andreas upon the

method of their making.

"Thou hast heard of Master Caxton?" he asked the German boy.

"Aye, he of Bruges, and I have seen his work. Geraldus did as fair."

"Thou shalt help Caxton, then, to do fairer still. He is of Bruges no

longer, saints be praised, but practises his good craft in his own

native England now this two months syne at my own house in Westminster;

and he will fall upon thy neck in joy when I do bring thee to him."

The boy's eyes sparkled with elation. Forgetting his weakness, he sat

upright.

"I would not be over-bold," he said, "but with these mine hands have I

held proofs for the Emperor to read from, and there is none of higher

state in this thy island of a surety. Art thou the duke of these

parts?"

"Rather a duke who fain would be of all parts," the young knight

answered, and then smiled to note that the quip was lost upon the

foreign lad. He made a little movement of his hand to signify that he

would be no longer unknown, and one of the others informed the

questioner.

"It is his Grace of Gloster--our good King's brother--who honors you

with his princely favor."

Some archers bore in a bed of boughs at this, over which the Prince,

still smiling, spread his own red cloak, jewelled collar and all. To

another he gave the casket with the book.

"I keep my Christmas at the house of holy St. Bernard, down the

valley," he said, as the men lifted Andreas gently into the litter, and

folded the royal robe about his slender form. "Sobeit thou gainest

strength there, in warm bed and cheerful care, shalt ride to London

with me."

So, as he turned upon his heel, the torch-bearers spread themselves

forth to light his way; and after him, with much rattling of iron, arms

and armor, the knights and the men with the litter pushed their way.

Dickon stood by the declining fire, awed and struck dumb with what had

come to pass. The brother of the King! They were bearing Andreas away,

and he was left under the black winter sky with his crossbow and frozen

boar and empty bottle, desolate and alone.

He stared stupidly at the dancing torch-lights on the armor of the

passing group, with a dull ache in his breast.

Then suddenly he heard the shrill voice of Andreas crying, "Dickon! My

Dickon!"

Dickon ran headlong forward, and stood boldly beside the litter, which

for the moment was halted in its progress. When the Prince turned to

look back, the smith's son faced even this mighty glance upright, and

with his chin in the air. If the wrath of kings' brothers killed, then

he would at least die beside Andreas.

"What to-do is this?" Richard of Gloster asked, with a bending of his

brows upon the peasant lad.

The Prince had stopped, and with him all his cortège. Above him

flickered in its final stage the last of the rush-lights on the tree.

Now that he stood cloakless, one of his shoulders was revealed higher

than the other.

"He saved my poor life, your Highness," spoke Andreas swiftly from his

couch. "He came to Camber Dane along with the robber band, but in the

pillage he bore no part, and with his own hands slew he two villains

who would have run me down, and bore me through the forest here, and

got food and drink and fire for me, and guarded my 'Troilus' there from

loss and----"

"Whose man art thou, boy?" the Prince broke in.

"I was Sir Watty Curdle's man," Dickon made answer, with a stumbling

tongue, but bold enough mien. "But that I will be no more, but rather

die here first."

"Why, Sir Watty hath outstripped thee in _that_ race. I set his head up

on a pole in Craven market-place this morning, and Egswith hath the

King's men in it to keep for once an honest Christmas," said the

Prince, smiling grimly. "What name hast thou?"

"No other name save Dickon."

"Why, then, for all this doughty strife and brave work shalt have

another atop of it," the Prince said, his shrewd, shapely young face

melting into a kindly softness. "Art a good lad to be thus sued for."

He cast his swift glance about in instant search for some fit surname,

and his eye caught the struggling taper-light upon the bough above him.

"Thou shalt be Dickon of the Tannenbaum," he called out, so that each

might hear, "and wear my boar's head in exchange for that other thou

didst slay, and hold thyself my man."

Then the torches moved on again, and behind them, in their dancing

shadows through the wintry wood, the Prince and knights and litter

passed; and Dickon followed to the highroad, where horses and

five-score men-at-arms were waiting, and so to the abbey before ever

midnight struck.

Seven years afterward, on bloody Bosworth field, when King Richard

hewed his despairing way through the ring of steel which engirdled the

pretender Richmond, and fell there dead, another Richard rode hotly at

his heels, and like him was stricken to the earth.

But life was left in this second, and for the madness of his bravery it

was spared. After he had lain a time in Leicester Abbey, to be cured of

his wounds, he went to London, where Henry now was king instead. It was

our Dickon.

The aged Master Caxton and Andreas Mayer, his right hand now, stood

Dickon's friends at court, and it came in time to pass that he died Sir

Richard Tannibow, for so the English tongue framed the strange foreign

word Tannenbaum. Of the properties he left behind the chief was the

domain of Egswith, where once he had been the lowliest of hinds.

In after ages the name of the family still further changed to Tambow;

but it is not likely to undergo any further shortening. Though they do

not hold Egswith now, and wear no title in these later times, the

Tambows still bear upon their shield the fir tree and the candles, and

rightfully hold their heads as high as any in all Shropshire.

WHERE AVON INTO SEVERN FLOWS.

CHAPTER I.

HUGH THE WRITER.

A boy of fifteen, clad in doublet and hose of plain cloth dyed a sober

brown, sat alone at one end of a broad, vaulted room, before a writing

table. The strong, clear light which covered him and his work fell

through an open window, arched at the top and piercing a stone wall of

almost a yard's thickness. Similar openings to the right and left of

him marked with bars of light a dozen other places along the extended,

shelf-like table, where writers had now finished their day's labor,

and, departing, had left covered horns of ink and cleansed utensils

behind them. But the boy's task lagged behind fulfilment, and mocked

him.

Strive as he might, Hugh could not compel the tails of the longer

letters to curl freely and with decent grace, or even to run in the

same direction, one with the other. Though he pressed his elbow to the

board, and scowled intently at the vellum before him, and even thrust

out his tongue a little in earnest endeavor, still the marks went

wrong. At last there came at the end of a word an "f," which needs must

flow into shapely curves at top and bottom, if all fair writing were

not to be shamed--and, lo! it did neither, but sloped off shakily into

a rude angle above, a clumsy duck's egg below. Then he laid down his

reed pen, and groaned aloud.

This Hugh Overtown, having later come to man's estate and then

comfortably ripened into old age, has been dust and ashes now close

upon four hundred years. For every minute in that huge stretch of time,

some other boy since then has put aside his pen and groaned, because

the stubborn letters would not come right. But not many of these have

had such sound cause for vexation.

First of all, Hugh was a trained writer, who might look a little later

to be actually paid for his toil, if so be he did not take the black

habit and became a monk himself. All of their gentle craft that the

master limners and letterers in this great scriptorium of Tewkesbury

Abbey could teach him, he had learned. In all the ten major abbeys and

priories of Gloucestershire, perhaps no other lad of his years was so

skilled to use both brush and pen. His term of tutelage being passed,

he wrought now, in repayment for his teaching, upon the choicest of the

volumes written here for great nobles and patrons of art and letters.

And if ever sureness of glance and touch was called for, it was at this

present time, since the work must be meet for royal eyes. The

volume--when all its soft, creamy leaves should have been covered with

arabesques and high painted crests and shields and deftly regular text

of writing, and been sewed together inside their embossed covers--was

to be given, they said now, to the brother of the King. Prouder

ambition than this a craftsman could hardly dream of--yet now, all at

once, Hugh despaired to find himself making foolish mis-marks on the

precious page, and not able to contrive their betterment.

The boy stared in gloom upon the parchment, wondering if, in truth, it

were wholly spoilt; then his eyes wandered off through the open window

to the blue May sky, and drifting after their gaze went his thoughts,

in wistful reverie upon that gilded dreamland of princes and earls,

whither this book, in good time, was to wend its way. New promptings

stirred in his blood.

He had been a monk's boy in all these later years of peace, since his

father, the poor saddler, fell in his Nevill livery on Hedgely Moor,

away in the farthest north. The great kindly Abbey had been much more

his home than the dark, squalid little house in the village below,

where his widowed mother lived: here he had learned to write so that

even the Abbot, John Strensham, lofty magnate and companion of princes

though he was, had nodded smilingly over his work; here he had helped

to serve the Mass in the grand Abbey church, with censer and bell, and

felt his young mind enriched and uplifted by pious longings; here, too,

he had dreamed into the likeness of veritable and detailed history his

vision of the time when he should compose some wonderful chronicle, and

win thanks from the great ones of the earth, and be known to all men as

Hugh of Tewkesbury, whose book was to be prized above every other.

But now, after seven years wherein peaceful desires possessed plain

men--lo! here was fighting in the land. And now of a sudden it seemed

to Hugh that the writing of books, the quiet cloistral life, even the

favor of the Abbot himself, were paltry things. An unaccustomed heat

tingled in his veins at thought of what existence outside these thick

walls might now once more signify. Who would be a stoop-shouldered

scribe, a monk, or even a mass-priest when there were war harnesses to

wear, horses to mount, yew bows to bend till the shaft trembled in the

strain?

Hugh could almost believe that he heard the tramp and distant confused

murmuring of an armed host, as his musing dream took form. The very

pages lying before him spoke of this new outburst of war, and linked

him to it. The book was one of heraldry, and it had been begun for the

great Earl of Warwick. Both the fame and the person of this mighty

captain were well-known to the lad, for the King-maker was lord of

Tewkesbury, and the overshadowing patron of village and abbey alike.

But when scarcely the first sheets had been written this puissant lord

had fled the kingdom, and the cautious monks had laid the work aside.

Later came strange rumors and tales: how Warwick had returned and

driven the King away, and put up his whilom Red-rose foes to rule in

London--and then pens and brushes were set busily at the book once

more. But now the King had in turn come back and seized his own again,

and slain Warwick on bloody Barnet field--and the frightened monks had

bethought them to finish the book, with sundry emblazonings of the

royal arms now ingeniously married to those of the Nevills, and make it

a peace offering to Duke George of Clarence, who had wedded Warwick's

daughter, and would be lord of Tewkesbury in his shoes.

The half-written page of vellum on the table seemed to Hugh a living

part of all this stirring new romance of blood and spark-striking

steel. Almost it made a soldier out of him to touch it. The characters

engrossed thereon by his own hand danced before his eyes--waved in his

daydream like the motto on some proud knight's banner being borne

forward to battle.

Suddenly the boy sat upright. Beyond question there _was_ an unwonted

noise, as of tumult, coming through the casement from the village

without. He could distinguish the clanking of iron harness and weapons,

the trampling of hoofs; and now--once! twice! a trumpet blast, rising

on the air above the dull, vague rumble which bespeaks the assembling

of a throng. He sprang to his feet, with the thought to climb the

embrasure and look forth--and then as swiftly sat down again and bent

over his work; the Chief Scrivener of the Abbey had entered the

chamber.

Brother Thomas came slowly to the table--a good, easy man, whose fat

white fingers knew knife and spoon now in these latter days much

oftener than brush or pen--and glanced idly over Hugh's shoulder at the

pages. Then he lifted the unfinished one, held it in the light to peer

more closely, and sniffed aloud. Next he put his hand under Hugh's

chin, and raised the boy's blushing face up till their glances met.

"What palsied spiders'-tracks are these?" he asked, holding out the

vellum. "Art ill, boy?"

The gentle irony in his master's tone touched Hugh's conscience. He

shook his head, and hung it, and kept a sheepish silence.

Thomas tossed the sheet upon the table, and spoke with something more

of sharpness. "It is the mummers that have led thy wits off

morris-dancing," he said. "These May-day fooleries stretch themselves

out now, each year more, until no time at all is left for honest work.

This it is I noted in thee yesterday, and marvelled at--when thou hadst

ruled the lines bordering the painted initial letter with effect to cut

off holy St. Adhelm's ear. Thy head is filled with idle sports and

frolics outside. Happen his Lordship shall put them down now, once for

all!"

Hugh's red face turned redder still, and when he would have spoken, his

tongue was tied in confusion. Brother Thomas had unwittingly drawn very

near to the truth of an awkward thing, the burden of which lay heavily

on the boy's mind. In the next room, hidden but indifferently, were the

fanciful garments which he himself had painted for the village

morris-dancers a month before. They had been returned in privacy to

him, and he had weakly pledged himself to trick them out anew against

their coming use at Whitsuntide. This guilty secret it was that had

preyed upon his peace, and robbed his hand of its cunning, ever since

the masking dresses had been brought to him on yester-morning.

In any other year, he might have spoken freely to his master of this

matter. But as evil chance would have it, on this very May festival,

now two days gone--when in their pleasant wont the youths and maidens

of Tewkesbury rose before cockcrow, and hied them to the greenwood with

music and the blowing of horns, to gather haythorn branches and

dell-flowers, to bathe their faces in the May-dew for beauty's sake, to

shoot at target with Robin Hood, and dance their fill about Maid

Marian--who but Brother Thomas should pass on his return from matins at

Deerhurst cell, nodding drowsily with each movement of his patient

mule? Hugh recalled with a shudder how some wanton ne'er-do-well had

from the bushes hurled a huge, soft swollen toadstool, which broke upon

the good monk's astonished countenance, and scattered miserably inside

his hood. It was small wonder that from this Brother Thomas conceived

sour opinions of May-day sports, and now hinted darkly that the Abbot

should make an end to them. But as it stood thus, Hugh dared not speak

concerning the morris-dresses, and so had hidden them, and now was

sorely troubled about it all.

It may be that here, upon the moment, he would have broken silence with

his secret, well knowing how truly gentle a heart had Thomas. But at

this the door was flung open, and there entered Brother Peter, his

gaunt gray poll shaking with excitement, his claw-like hands held up as

one amazed, his eyes aflame with eagerness.

"Know ye what is come upon us?" he called out breathlessly. "The

foreign woman--save her Grace, she that was--or is--Queen Margaret, I

mean--is at our gates, and with her the Lord Duke Somerset, and her son

the Prince Edward, and the great Earl's daughter, our Lady Anne, and

with them a mort of lords, and knights, and men-at-arms--running now

over every highway and lane inside Tewkesbury and out, taking to

themselves roughly whatever eye likes or belly craves--swearing by the

Rood they will have the Abbey down about our ears if we deny them or

food or drink!"

While Peter's vehement tongue hurled forth these tidings, the man

Thomas went pale with sudden concern for the great treasures and peace

of the house; the boy Hugh rose to his feet, all the miseries of

May-day and morris-garments clean forgotten, and only the inspiriting

ring of steel on steel in his ears.

"Oh! may I run and behold the brave sight?" he prayed aloud, but Thomas

held forth a restraining hand for the moment, and Hugh, much chafing,

heard what further Peter had to tell.

The Abbot, and with him the heads of the Chapter, had gone to the

gates, and by parley had warded off incursion. The Abbey servants,

threescore in number, were bearing forth meat and bread and ale to

spread on the ham by the mill for the famished Lancastrians, who had in

these thirty hours marched from Bristol by Gloucester, through forest

and foul by-ways, with scarcely bite or sup, and now ravened like

winter wolves. There were stories that King Edward, in pursuit, had

covered ground even more swiftly, and now was this side of Cheltenham,

in hot chase. With this dread foe at their tail, the Lancastrian lords

dared not attempt to ford the Severn, and so Queen, Prince, Duke, and

all were halted up above the village on the high Gaston fields, and

there would on the morrow give battle to King Edward.

"Oh! woe the day!" groaned Thomas, whose heart was in peaceful things.

"How shall we escape sack and pillage--our painted missals and fair

written tomes, our jewelled images, our plate of parcel-gilt, and

silver-gilt and white, the beryl candlesticks, the mitres, monstrances,

rings, gloves--wist ye not how after Wakefield's victory the Queen's

men broke open churches, and defiled altars, from York along to London

town?"

"Hast but a poor stomach for war times, good Thomas!" said the lean and

eager old Brother Sacristan, in a tone spiced with sneering. "Who

talketh of Wakefield? Who hath promised victory to these ribald Devon

louts? On the morrow, we shall see them cast off their coats to run the

better. Our stout King Edward hath never lost fight or turned tail yet.

Shall he begin now?"

The old monk had not forgotten the deep Yorkist devotion in which his

hotter secular youth had been trained, and his eyes sparkled now at

thought of how true a fighter King Edward really was. No such fire of

remembrance burned within Thomas, who none the less accepted the

proffered consolation.

"Of a certainty," he admitted, "the King hath won all his battles

heretofore. Doubtless he hath the close favor of the saints. I mind me

now of his piety--how that he would not be crowned on the day

appointed, for that it was Childermas, and the Holy Innocents might not

be thus affronted. Thus do wise and pious kings and men"--Thomas lifted

his voice here, and glanced meaningly at Hugh--"win Heaven's smiles,

and honor fitly the anniversaries of the year--not by dancing and

mumming in the greenwood."

"I ween that in this game now forward, hard knocks will serve King

Edward more than all his holiness, good Thomas," said Peter, who,

coming to the Abbey late in life, brought some carnal wisdom along in

his skull. "And this more--mark thou my words--when all is still again

the Abbey will be the richer, not the poorer, for it all."

"How wilt thou make that good?" asked Thomas. "At best, this beef and

ale must be at our cost--and the worst may more easily come to pass."

"Hast forgotten the funerals?" said Peter, dryly, with a significant

nod towards the door beyond. Then, noting no gleam of comprehension on

the faces of the others, he strode to this door, and threw it open.

Within, in the half light, they could see through the narrow archway

the dim outlines of rich banners standing piled against the walls, and

candles heaped on chests of vestments, and velvet palls.

"How make it good?" cried the worldly Peter. "Where we have put pence

into that room we shall draw forth rose-nobles. Know you not the King's

charge to his fighting men, 'Kill the lords, but spare the commons!' By

sundown of the morrow one may walk among dead knights round about like

sheeps' carcasses on a murrain'd moor. The Gastons, if there the Queen

holdeth her place till she be met, will turn to marshes with gentle

blood. And where shall they be buried, but here, within the holy

Abbey's walls? Then see what comes: item, for tolling the death-bells;

item, for streaking-board and face-cloth; item, for so many sin-eaters,

to be of our own servitors; item, for so much waste of funeral torches;

item, for funeral sermons; item, for the hiring of palls; item, for

hiring of garlands of wax and gum to hang over the graves; item, for

masses and candles before the rood at month's mind; item----"

"Peace, greedy Peter!" broke in the artist Thomas; "wert thou bred for

a gravedigger? His Lordship mislikes this funeral zeal of thine. When

thy grumbling for that the great Earl came not here from Barnet for his

burial reached the Abbot's ears, he spoke wrothfully concerning it."

"So would he not, when I had shown him the charges in my book for that

same," retorted Peter. "For how lives an Abbey save by the death of

generous and holy men and women? And was it not a foul thing that the

great Earl--lord of this manor, patron of this Abbey--should not have

profitably laid his bones here, where now for four hundred years lie

all the lords of Tewkesbury, Fitz-Hamons, Clares, De Spensers,

Beauchamps--but should be filched away to Berkshire to enrich those

Austin friars instead? Thus is religion scandalized, Sir Scrivener!"

Thomas turned away at this, mistrusting his temper in further argument;

and Hugh would gladly have followed him out of the room, but that Peter

bent his steps toward the storage chamber beyond, where lay hidden

those wretched morris trappings. Prudence counselled the lad to depart,

and let discovery take care of itself; but anxiety held him back, and

he went in at the heels of the Sacristan.

Old Peter sent a speculative eye shrewdly over the contents of the

room, making a rough enumeration as he progressed, and offering

comments aloud from time to time half to himself.

"Full seven dozen small candles," he muttered, "but scarce a score of

torches. How should we be shamed if they brought us a great lord like

Somerset! The moulds shall be filled overnight." Then he turned up the

corner of a purple velvet pall, noting its frayed edge and tarnished

gilt braid. "Time was," he grumbled, "when for this eight crowns was

gladly paid in hire; alack, but two months since Dame Willowby cried

out against me when I asked a paltry five, and buried her good man

under that fustian with the linen edge instead. Ah, the impious times

we are fallen upon! Yet, if so be the press to get buried is great

enough, and they carry the lights well up in air, a lord might be

content with it at ten crowns." Again he mused over the waxen wreaths

heaped on the floor.

"There are half as many more on the rood screen that may come down, if

it be deftly done, and go into hire again for better men. The

townspeople will be too stirred with battle talk to miss them."

Suddenly he turned to Hugh, and raised his voice. "The Sub-Prior will

not hearken to me. What we are richest in is banners--here, against the

wall, are a dozen of the bravest in all Gloucester. Yet in what do they

serve!--naught save those trivial processions of Rogation Week, where

all is outlay and nothing income. If he did but drop the hint, the

fashion would rise to hire them for funerals; yet when I urged this

upon him he laughed me to scorn! I tell thee, boy, there is no true

piety left in mankind!"

Hugh had listened with but dull ears, his mind wavering between

thoughts of what was going forward outside, and fears lest Peter should

push his inquiries within the chamber too far. Here he said:--

"Good brother, if I do help thee to-night with the moulds--and later

with what else is needful--wilt thou go with me now forth to the street

and view these strange new things? I have never yet seen an army,

harnessed for fighting, close at hand. And if thou art with me, Thomas

will not be vexed."

So the twain--the old monk full as eager as the lad to rub shoulders

with men-at-arms--made their way through the corridors and cloister

walks to the great western gate of the Abbey. They met no one either

within the buildings or in these cool, open-air paths: the monks were

at their prayers in the church, perhaps, or in the garden burying the

Abbey's treasures.

But when the gate was reached--"Angels save us!" gasped good Peter; "if

our walls win soundly through this next forty hours, commoners shall be

buried with candles till Ascension Day for threepence. I vow it to Our

Lady!"

Well might such as loved the Abbey feel their hearts sink at the sight!

Upon the green before the gate, which sloped smoothly for an arrow's

flight down to the mill pit on the Avon, swaggered or lounged at

leisure full five hundred base-born archers and billmen, mired to the

knees, unwashed and foul of aspect, with rusty chain coats or torn and

blackened leathern jackets. Some wore upon their heads battered iron

sallets; others had only hoods pulled forward to their brows, or even

lying back upon their shoulders, but over each face hung tangled masses

of thick hair, and on the cleanest chin sprouted a fortnight's beard.

These unkempt ruffians were for the most part swart of visage, as Devon

and Cornishmen should be. They waited now idly upon the return of their

lords from the great church in front. While their betters within prayed

to the saints in heaven against the morrow's carnage, these fellows

sauntered in groups on the green sward, or played at dice upon a cloak

spread flat on earth, or wrestled in rough jest to further amaze the

gaping natives. Many were already in their cups, yet still the servants

of the Abbey were to be seen, in the waning sunlight, on the ham

beyond, broaching new casks of ale. Ribald quips and drunken laughter

filled the air. In the distance, close upon the entrance to the church

itself, two soldiers had thrown a farmer to the ground, and one was

stripping off his doublet while the other kicked him as he lay. From

the direction of the mill there rose the scream of a woman--and no one

heeded it.

The Sacristan and the boy cowered for a time in the shadow of the

gateway, looking out with fearful eyes upon this unwonted scene. From

their cover, they watched until the great ones began coming out from

their prayers, and the idling men-at-arms were hurriedly gathered, each

after his livery, to attend them. These billmen bore upon their breasts

the cognizances of their masters, but so worn and defaced were many of

these that all Hugh's heraldic lore could not cope with them. Thus they

could but guess who this or that proud knight might be, as he passed

with gilded armor rattling in every joint, and the squalid knot of

soldiers tramping at his heels.

"But this--this is surely the three _torteaux_ of the Courtenays," he

whispered, nudging Peter. "And he who carries his casquetel in hand,

with fair curls and head bent in thought--that would be John, the new

Earl of Devon."

The two looked upon this fine, strong, goodly young nobleman, and read

in the three crimson circles wrought upon the jerkins of his retainers

a tale of stately long descent, of cousinship with kings, of crusades,

tournaments, and centuries of gallant warfare--familiar and stirring

then to every schooled mind in England.

"Ay--I mind him now," said Peter, peering eagerly forth. "I saw his

brother, the Earl Thomas, led to the block at York, after Towton

field--'tis nine years sine. There was a witch who then foretold that

those three ripe-red roundels of the Courtenays were blood spots from

three brothers' hearts, and all should die under the axe."

A stranger's voice, close behind them, took up their talk.

"My father saw the second brother, Earl Henry, beheaded at Salisbury

four years later--and men called then to mind this same bloody

prophecy--to the end that the Lord John fled the realm. Look where he

walks, with bowed head and face o'er-cast--a fateful man! Belike the

axe's edge is whetted for him, even now."

He who spoke thus, with a shivering sigh to close his speech, was young

and of slight form--clad from sole to crown in plain and dulled

plate-harness. His uplifted visor framed a face of small features and

soft lines, with saddened eyes. He had stepped aside into the gateway

unnoted by the two, and stood now at the Sacristan's elbow, gazing

forth as gloomily as ever affrighted monk might do.

Peter glanced him briefly over, and sniffed disdain.

"I know you not, young sir," he said, with curtness, "and offer no

offence. But I have seen stout fighting in my time--and were you kin of

mine, into to-morrow's battle you should not stir, with witches' babble

sickening your thoughts, and dead men's bones in your eyes. Hearten

yourself, I conjure you!"

That monk should bear himself thus masterfully toward warrior startled

Hugh for the moment, until he recalled that old Peter had on occasion

browbeaten even the Sub-Prior himself, and reflected that this Knight

seemed very young.

The stranger made no reply, but kept his anxious gaze fastened upon the

scene without. Then, with a sudden little shudder which rattled swiftly

like an echo through his armor, he lifted his head upright, and tossed

the end of his cloak across his shoulder.

"The streets are strange to me," he said proudly. "If you are so

minded, walk with me upon them. No harm shall befall you!"

His beckoning hand summoned from the outer shadows two tall old

men-at-arms, in bull's-hide jackets and bearing pikes.

"Fare ye close upon our heels, Wilkin and Ashman," the Knight

commanded. The monk and scrivener-lad took instant counsel of glances,

and without a word walked beside their new companion--forth from the

calm haven of Mother Church into the rude turbulence of murderous civil

war.

Pressing tight together, the five made their way across the green and

into Church Street. To their left, above the black roofs of the Abbey

mills, the sunset sky was glowing with laced bars of blood and sulphur,

overhung by a pall of lead. Before them, the narrow street lay dark

beneath the shadows of projecting roofs and swollen galleries.

Here, as in the other streets which they traversed, the houses were for

the most part closed and lightless. Even in the market-place, where the

Tolzey cross glimmered faintly in the waning daylight like an altar in

some deserted unroofed church, the citizens gave no sign of life in

their homes; movement enough was on foot all about them, but it was

that of strangers. Knots of soldiers, some already with flaming

torches, strode aimlessly up and down before the taverns and in the

alleys, roaring forth camp songs, kicking at suspected doors, or

brawling with such trembling inhabitants as they had unearthed. Amidst

it all the Knight passed unquestioned, with head haughtily erect.

If the Knight had led the walk townwards with set purpose, it did not

appear; for presently he turned, and the five pushed back again through

the jostling, clamorous crowd to the open Abbey green. At the great

gate he paused, and motioned the two retainers to stand aside. Still he

hesitated, tapping the sward impatiently with his mailed foot, his gaze

astray among the clouds. At last he spoke, turning abruptly to the

boy:--

"Canst write me a letter, to-night?"

"How wist ye he is a penman?" asked Peter, in amazed suspicion.

"What other wears ink upon his fingers? Nay--not you, good monk!--I

asked the lad."

"The scriptorium is long since shut," Hugh began; "and----"

"Mayhap this golden key will fit the lock," the Knight interposed,

drawing a coin from the purse at his side. "The letter is a thing of

life or death."

"It may be contrived," broke in good Peter, taking the money without

ceremony. "When a life hangs on a few paltry scratches of the pen,

should we be Christians to withhold them?"

The Sacristan led the way now by a postern door into a basement room,

and lighted two candles by the embers on the hearth.

"Run you," he said to Hugh, "and bring hither what is needful."

When the boy returned, and placed paper, inkhorn, and wax upon the

table, and, pen in teeth, looked inquiry upward, the Knights wits

seemed wandering once again. He paced to and fro about the chamber,

halting a dozen times to utter words which would not come, and then,

with a head-shake, taking up his march upon the stones. Finally, thus

he ordered the letter written, though not without many pauses, and

erasures in plenty:--

From a true friend: Much there is to tell you; how that the Lady

Katherine's father is dead, and herself for some time sore beset

and menaced by the enemy you wot of, but now in safety. Worse

betides you if this evil man works his will. This se'nnight four

villeins took horse from Okehampton with intent to slay you and win

reward from him; so that he gains your lands and hers, and gets her

to wife to boot. These foul knaves wear the Courtenay livery, and,

arrived to-day in your camp, mix with the Lord John's train; though

of this he is innocent. So watch and ware, as herself and I will

pray.

"There needs no signature," the Knight replied, when at the finish Hugh

looked up. "Seal it with this ring," and took from his baslard-hilt a

little jewelled hoop, with the signet of three fishes, upright. Then,

when the wax securely held the silk, he bade him superscribe the name

"Sir Hereward Thayer, Knt."

The Knight took the packet--saying, briefly: "I am in much beholden to

you both, and to all black monks through you, and shall forget nor one

nor other," and went his way through the postern into the darkness,

leaving the ring behind.

CHAPTER II.

SIR HEREWARD'S RING.

From the spire of the Abbey church, throughout the night, the monks

could see on the high lands close by, to the south, long lines of red

camp-fires, and dancing torches here and there, as captains made their

watchful rounds. The cries of the sentries came to their ears through

the stilled air, as from the near side of Swilgate Brook itself, which

washed the Abbey's walls. Little of sleep did the cells or dormitories

know that frightened night, for servants were busy till the first

cock-crow burying jewels and plate in the Abbot's garden, and half the

brothers kept vigil in prayer before the High Altar, or in the chapels

of St. Eustacius and St. James, while others slumbered fitfully on

their pallets, or climbed the tower to watch the Lancastrians' lights.

Thus, at last, anxious morning broke, and the cawing of the rooks in

the branches close to Hugh's window roused the boy from his sleep. At a

bound he was on his feet, forgetting even to rub his eyes, and glad

that, having slept in his clothes, he might fare forth without loss of

time. His dreams had been all of archery--how that the best bows were

of Spanish yew, and he had tried to cut down the English yews in the

churchyard to make new weapons, and had been haled before the King's

justices because of the law to preserve the yews for the King's

armies--and the thread of this dream ran through his mind even as he

knelt and muttered his prayer.

It was full daylight when Hugh found himself outside the Abbey walls

and on the footpath leading over the brook up to the Vineyards. Behind

him the matin chimes were sounding from the belfry. Before him rose the

dismantled walls of Holme Castle, once the abiding place of the great

Earls of Gloster, but now long since grown over with ivy, and a harbor

for owls and bats. When he had come to the top of the knoll, at the

front of these ruins, the sight spread out before his eyes was one to

well quicken breath and set veins tingling.

A vast host of armed men seemed to cover the earth as far as he could

see. The boy had not known before that the whole world contained so

many soldiers. One company was in the rough meadow close at hand. In

the bright light he could discern them clearly--strong men of war, with

battered steel breastplates, half blue, half red with rust, and iron

caps upon their heads. Some of these were leading a score of horses

back and down to the brook whence he had come. Others toiled at

levelling some half-dozen camp-tents of white cloth, with crimson

stripes, while still others crowded about the place where sparks

crackled and black smoke curled about huge caldrons wherein food was

cooking. At the peak of the largest tent, high upon the staff, floated

gently in the early breeze an emblazoned standard, bearing the

blood-red three roundels of the Courtenays.

For a moment Hugh's thoughts stopped at the memory of the strange

Knight and his letter; somewhere among this band of brawny fighting men

would be the four caitiffs who were here to slay that unknown Devon

gentleman, Sir Hereward. He glanced at his little finger, whereon the

signet ring of the three fishes glittered unwontedly,--and marvelled to

find his base-born skin touched by such a trinket, for he had resisted

Peter's desire to take it over to the Abbey treasury,--and then the

glance lifted itself to still more marvellous things.

Away in the distance, on the topmost point to the left hand of the

highroad, Hugh had already noted a brave pavilion, guarded by banks of

earth raised since last he saw that familiar horizon, and overhung by

what he saw now to be the royal standard of England's Kings. A blare of

trumpets, rolling in sharp echoes from mound to mound across the field,

proceeded now from this point, and as he looked Hugh saw upon the

highway, setting forth in his direction, a little cavalcade of knights

and ladies whose dress and trappings sparkled in the morning sun, even

thus afar, like the lights on the High Altar beneath the painted

windows.

Onward this group of riders came--and the boy, creeping under the cover

of the hedge, stole forward with no other thought than to see them

close at hand. And so it was that he crouched in listening silence, not

more than twenty paces removed, when this thing happened.

The tall, grave-faced, golden-haired noble whom Hugh knew to be John,

Earl of Devon, clad all in burnished steel, and bearing a great

lion-crested tilting helmet upon his arm, strode forth from the company

near the ruins to the highway, and stood thus, with bare head erect in

the sunlight, until the riders, cantering lightly over the dew-laid

road, drew rein before him. Then he advanced, and bending with one knee

to earth, kissed the hand of a lady who, with a single knight, rode at

the head of the little train.

[Illustration: "HE ADVANCED AND KISSED THE LADY'S HAND."]

This lady, then,--she with the bold, beautiful face, pale now as an

ivory missal-cover, and drawn with stern lines, she with the burning

brown-black eyes, and proudly upright carriage,--was the Frenchwoman,

the Queen, the great Margaret of Anjou!

Hugh held his breath and stared out of fixed eyes at this terrible

foreign woman, whose hates had fastened war upon his country, had

killed even his own father, had drenched the land with blood--and

listened with all his ears.

"We have given you, out of our grace, the lands and titles which your

recreant brother Henry forfeited, and lost along with his head, when he

played fast and loose with the usurper," this Queen said, in loud, cold

tones, when the Courtenay stood upright again. "This day will test our

wisdom in the thing."

"Madame," the Earl made answer, holding her eye with his, "our house

has given three lives for you. If mine goes to-day I shall die

sorrowing chiefly for this--that there are no more of us to die for our

King."

The knight who rode beside the Queen--Hugh through the bushes saw only

that he was tall and lean, with a delicately handsome young face and

reddish-brown hair under his beaver, and wore a silver swan on his

breast--spoke now:--

"My Lord of Devon, my mother rides now with the Lady Anne and her

tiring women to a place of safety on t'other side of Avon, there to

wait upon the good tidings we shall presently bring her. The place is

at Bushley, the Lady Anne being acquainted with it from childhood. From

this, I return to lead our centre, with the Prior and the Lord Wenlock.

My Lord Duke holds the front, beyond where our standard hangs. To you,

my lord, the rear is given, to swing across this field, with your back

against the ridge. The men from Somerset march to join you, even now.

God stead you, honest Courtenay, and bring us victory!"

The Prince at this threw himself off his horse and into his mother's

arms, his face buried upon her knees, his hands holding hers. The

Queen, with marble face, swept her agonized glance high into the

morning sky, and wept not, neither spoke, but bit her lips, and with

her eyes invoked the saints.

Then, like some dissolving mist before Hugh's gaze, everything was

altered. The Queen with her escort was ambling one way, toward the gray

Abbey walls and the passage at the mill; her gallant young son was

galloping with his group of knights back whence he came; the Courtenay

company, close at hand, was gathering itself into ranks, with knights

clambering heavily into saddles, and men-at-arms striking their pikes

together. The whole broad field was, as by some magic hand, set in

motion; everywhere troops were marching, standards fluttering forward,

trumpets calling shrill-voiced to one another.

The boy, lifting his head now above the hedge, looked upon this vast

shifting picture with but a dazed comprehension. The beauty of it all

was so great that its grim meaning missed his mind. As far as eye could

reach, armed bodies of men, with banners and harness glittering in the

sunlight, met the vision. And now, of a sudden, all movement ceased.

The birds in the ivy on the ruin behind him sang into the morning air,

and no trumpet answered them. The landscape stood still.

Suddenly the boy clapped hands to ears, and stared affrightedly about

him. A demon-like roaring sound had burst, as out of the very earth,

which rocked and quivered under the shock. A thousand thunder-claps in

one, out from the clear sky! Quailing with fright, as lesser belching

noises succeeded, shaking the ground and confounding all senses and

wits, Hugh backed out of the ditch, and felt, rather than made, his way

rearward to the shadow of the ruins. Creeping up upon a ragged heap of

tumbled stones, he ventured to look forth again.

A broadened veil of smoke--curious, thin, bluish smoke--all unlike that

from burning thatches or stubble refuse--hung now upon the horizon

where the royal standard had been. Was it still there? Hugh could not

tell. Flashes of fire leaped swiftly for an instant here and there from

this veil of smoky haze, and after each dart of flame there burst this

deafening, thunderous roar which had so appalled him. Then it broke

upon his brain that these were cannon, of which all men had long since

heard, but few had ever seen on English soil. More than this it was not

easy to grasp of what was going forward. Along the line of smoke, where

sky ought to meet earth, could be seen confused masses of horse and

footmen struggling together, but whither moving or how faring in their

conflict could not be told. The men under Courtenay's banner had

marched westward toward the windmill, and were not in sight.

All at once Hugh's gaze was diverted from this distant prospect to a

strange apparition nearer at hand--a brownish-gray sort of globe, like

a full moon, which, low to earth, stood between him and the smoke, and

seemed to wax in bigness visibly as he looked. There was not time for

thought before this ball, singing to itself as it came, swelled to

giant size in the lad's vision--then smashed into the vine-clad wall

beside him with a huge scattering of stones and mortar. The wall

quivered for a moment, then fell outward, prone to the sward.

Without hesitation, Hugh slid down from his perch, and half-choked with

dust and lime ran toward Swilgate Brook as fast as ever his legs would

carry him. He made no pause, nor cast any glance backward, until he

stumbled, panting and aflame with fright, into the cool shadow of the

Abbey's big west gate. Not till its ponderous doors had clanged shut

behind him, did he venture to draw breath.

Only the slowest and stoutest of the lay servitors in the kitchen

lingered yet over their morning meal when the boy, his hunger led

forward by keenest smelling sense, found his way thither. Within this

low-vaulted chamber it was as if the confusion of tongues had fallen

again. There were some hardier spirits who had, from sundry distant

points of vantage, seen a tithe of what Hugh had witnessed. These told

their tales to gaping, awe-stricken groups with much bold embroidery

and emblazoning of fancy, peopling the field with mailed giants, and

imputing to magic the mystery of the cannons, whose dire bellowings

gave even these stony kitchen walls a throbbing pulse. Worse still was

what the village vagabonds--permitted for the once to enter freely and

mix with their betters before the fires--related with rolling eyes and

quaking voices, to wile further victuals from the frightened cooks.

Into such riot ran this babel of loose tongues that not even the

Precentor's entrance stilled it. This gentle, soft-eyed old monk had,

indeed, no thought to govern aught or any, and gazed about over the

motley throng as one abashed, until his glance fell upon Hugh. To him

he beckoned, and, when the two were without upon the stairs, made

hurried explanation:--

"His Lordship will himself sing the early Mass, with pontifical

procession, and full chapter ceremonial. Get thee with all speed into

thy surplice, comb out thy locks--shalt bear the cross!"

A brief while later, paced slowly from the cloisters the long

devotional line, Hugh, all aglow with pride in his new office,

advancing at its head, with the jewelled cross upheld aloft. After him

were singing boys in surplices and singing men with added copes; then

two score monks in ebon black with lighted tapers, the secular canons,

the priests of the Abbey, the priors, the deacons attired for the

altar, and last the venerable Abbot, John Strensham, bent with age and

infirmities, and wearing over his vestments an almuce with hood of

ermine, because his blood was cold. Into the choir the procession filed

with measured step and solemn chant--and then, as by some sudden stroke

of universal palsy, foot halted and song died on lips.

Such a scene as never monk or abbot had dreamt of in Tewkesbury lay

before them.

The doors of the rood screen hung wide, so that vision swept from the

choir down through the nave and its outer parts, where the simple and

base-born heard the Mass, straight to the great north porch. Here, too,

the doors were open, for daylight streamed therefrom transversely

across the nave. And in this light the amazed monks saw a mired,

blood-stained, bedraggled swarm of armed men struggling fiercely for

entrance before their fellows, and among these some who smote and

felled the others with their swords or battle-axes--amid clamor of

shrieks and violent curses, rising above the ground-note of a deep wild

shouting as from a multitude without, and the furious clash of steel on

steel. The wrath of hell raged here and tore itself before them on the

consecrated floor of heaven.

While yet this spell of bewilderment lay upon the astounded spectators

in the choir, Hugh felt himself clutched by the shoulder and pushed

forward down the steps and into the aisle by a strong though trembling

hand. It was the old Abbot, who in the moment of horror at this

sacrilege forgot his years. Raising himself to his full height, and

snatching the great beryl monstrance from the altar, he hurried now

down the nave at such a pace that the cross-bearer, whom he dragged at

his side, and the wondering monks and choristers who followed, were

fain almost to run if they would not let him reach the porch alone.

The western end of the nave held now a closely-packed mass of

fugitives, with scarce a weapon among them--gilded and blazoned knight

huddled against unkempt billman, lord and varlet jammed together--all

crowding backward in despair from the open porch where, bestriding

corpses on the blood-wet flags, a dozen mailed ruffians with naked

swords and axes bent ferocious, hungry scowls upon them.

Helpless and dazed, as in an evil dream, the boy felt himself thrust

forward into the very front of these war-wolves; and as he stood there,

holding the cross as steadily as might be, within a cloth-yard shaft's

length of their ravening jaws and flame-lit eyes, his foolish knees

knocked together, and he had liked to swoon.

But then--lo! these fierce men put down their blades, and, bowing

first, with ill-will slunk backwards to the sides of the porch; and the

foremost, still doggedly, even fell upon their knees. Then, the way

being clear, Hugh saw that where the churchyard graves had been was

now, underfoot, a slaughter pen, and above a wilderness of wild faces

and dripping pike-heads. And in the forefront of this awful array, with

one mailed foot on the threshold of the porch itself, stood the noblest

figure of a man the boy's eyes had ever compassed--a youngish man of

uncommon stature and great girth of shoulders, girt with polished steel

armor picked in gold, and having on its breast a silver sun with

flaring jewelled rays. He too grasped a huge naked sword, and sank its

point before the cross Hugh held--the while two esquires made loose the

rivets of his towering helmet and lifted it from him. Then he, not too

humbly, bowed his head--a shapely head, with reddish-golden curls--and

lifting it, looked into the church with the flushed face and glance of

a very god of war.

The Abbot, tottering as he came, pushed Hugh aside and reared himself

proudly in the porch, holding the monstrance with shaken hand above his

head, and crying out:--

"Where thou standest, my liege, thou art not King, but only Edward

Plantagenet, a sinner even as the meanest of us, and with the blood of

God's children on thy hands. Therefore abase thyself. It is the Host!"

The King dropped to his knees for the counting of ten, then rose and

made a step within the porch, still searching sharply with restless

eyes into the shadows of the nave.

"My Lord Abbot," he said, in a soft, full voice of stately measure

which belied his glance, "I and my brothers and our trusty friends have

desire to forthwith enter this holy edifice, and with thee offer

reverent thanks for this our resplendent victory." As the Abbot held

his silence, the King added, "I had not looked to find a Strensham

lifting himself between the saints and my piety."

The Abbot found his voice: "I am stricken in years, my liege. My life

has been thine as long as has thy crown; take it now if needs be. But

while it lasts me, into this consecrated house thou may'st not enter to

ravish or mete punishment. Pledge me thy royal faith that no man within

these walls shall feel thy wrath--that all shall be suffered to go

forth in peace!"

"Since what time, my Lord Abbot," asked the King, dryly, "hath the

privilege of sanctuary descended upon the black monks of Tewkesbury?"

"Where God's flesh and blood are, there _is_ sanctuary!" shrilled

the Abbot. "By the pains of Calvary, thou shalt not enter

unpledged--save over my old bones!"

While the King's answer hung yet in doubt, an old monk slipped past the

Abbot, and, thrusting his shaven gray poll in obeisance close before

Edward, mumbled a request which none behind him might hear. It was

Peter, the Brother Sacristan--and the King, so far from buffeting the

audacious shaveling with his gauntlet, thought for a moment, then

smiled, and waved Peter aside.

"On my kingly honor, I promise," he said firmly, with a glance ranging

from Peter to the Abbot, and the half-smile playing on his handsome,

ruddy face. "Before God, I promise! And for this sacrilegious bloodshed

here, will I do penance!"

The Abbot's withered old lips formed a mute thanksgiving. "My liege,"

he faltered, "some forewarning of your triumph of a surety brought me

from my bed to the altar this day. Praise God thy enemies are put under

thy feet! Pray God for humility and a gentle spirit, these to stay thee

from trampling them! Wilt follow, and hear the Mass?"

Thus strangely, the broken procession was reformed, and Hugh, aweary

now under the weight of the cross, sick with the smell of blood and the

sight of hewn corpses at his feet, stumbled back again up the aisle,

past the rood screen, into the choir, the singers chanting the solemn

_Te Deum Laudamus_ behind him, and King, princes, nobles and knights

and monks and soldiers following the Abbot to the High Altar. Here, out

of pity at his white face, another took his office on him, and Hugh,

escaping from the incense-laden air of the choir, staggered into the

ambulatory, faint and distressed. He had too little wit left to note

that the side aisles and transepts held scores of skulking fugitive

soldiers, and that others of a like kidney were hiding in the shrine

chapels about him.

Not even when one of these came forth from the enclosure dedicated to

St. Edmund the Martyr, and laid hand upon his shoulder, was he

startled, but only looked up with wan indifference on his chalk-like

face.

"Where had ye that ring?" a deep voice asked, with tightened grip upon

his shoulder to point the query.

Hugh saw now that it was a stalwart young man who questioned him--and

one of quality, despite the miry disorder of his dress and armor, and

his dust-stained face. What could be discerned of this face was

pleasing enough, too--but the lad's head was whirling and his tongue

numbed at its roots. For his life he could not speak.

"That ring!" the stranger went on excitedly. "I saw it on your hand

whilst you held the cross--the which, now I think on't, saved our

lives. Fear nothing, lad! Tell me, how came you by it? Perchance I am

beholden to you for the letter last night--if so--will ye not speak, I

say!"

Hugh, with a despairing effort, gathered his wits, and asked faintly:

"Are you the Sir Hereward, then, to whom 'twas writ?"

"Aye, none other--what there is left of me. And writ ye the letter? And

at whose behest?"

The boy opened his mouth to answer, looked blankly up into his

questioner's face--then, as the swelling chant ceased suddenly in the

choir beyond, rolled supinely on the stones at Sir Hereward's feet, in

a deadly swoon.

Through what remained of this awful Saturday, and through the startled

hush of the Sunday following it, the boy kept his bed in a faint,

drowsing languor, broken by fits of shuddering under the terror of evil

dreams. Oft and again, the writing monks came in compassion to his

bedside, but his shaken wits made of these visitors only black figures

in the background of an endless scared vision of stark corpses, bearing

blood-stained heraldic shields along the pages of his book.

The second night came, and, lagging desperately through the long

watches, stole off by a trick at last while the lad slept--so that he

woke crowned as he lay with sunlight. The neglected book was in his

thoughts first of all--and then came consciousness that he was

better--and then, as he opened his eyes and blinked against the full

light, he saw that Peter was in the room, bearing a steaming dish of

broth.

"Art fit for great news?" the Sacristan asked, roughly enough, but

looking down upon the boy with a kindly light shining from under his

gray, shaggy brows. "The Prince Richard--my Lord Duke of Gloster--hath

sent hither for our best scrivener to attend him at the Tolzey, and

Brother Thomas, conferring with the Abbot, hath nominated thee. Not

that thou art our best, nor near it, but thy masters are in cowls and

gowns, and since Saturday's sacrilege no monk may stir forth to serve

the Princes or the King. Art fit for it?"

Hugh sat up in bed, and put hand to brow, and smiled wistfully. "Aye,

save for a foolish little wandering here," he made answer, "naught ails

me now!" And for proof he seized the dish and buried his jowl in it.

Peter strode up and down before the narrow casement, grumbling as his

gown flapped about his heels.

"Sacrilege! Sacrilege!" he sneered. "Well may the King laugh us to

scorn as witless loons! For what is 'sacrilege' but a weapon forged by

Holy Church to use against the laity, to our great profit and their

uplifting? Yet here are we, turning its point upon our own throats!

Because a little paltry blood was spattered in the porch--lo! for a

full month now the Church must lie in penitential darkness, no matins,

no masses, no vespers--until it be purified and newly consecrated. Was

ever such madness? Here with mine own eyes have I seen the son of a

king, he that was born Prince of Wales, shovelled into a grave in the

choir without so much as a rush-light. The flags are all up for

burials--the Earl of Devon, the Lord Wenlock, the Lord John Beaufort,

and scores of knights and brave gentlemen brought to us by God's own

hand--and yet we may not harvest so much as a penny for it all! Oh!

senseless chapter, to decree such folly!"

Hugh had in swift silence dressed himself the while the old monk

babbled, and stood now in all readiness. "I will to the scriptorium,

good Peter," he said eagerly, "to bring ink and pens and paper, and

then take orders from Brother Thomas for my going."

"Thomas thou may'st not see, nor any other," said the Sacristan; "each

is in his cell, upon his knees, because of this same sacrilege, and

there must stick for days!"

"But thou art here!"

"Oh, aye!" the old monk growled. "Belike I took the habit overlate in

life to learn the trick of good, thick, solid praying. They set me now

and again at small, light supplications, but when great things are

besought, my help seems never needful. Moreover, I have the burials to

order. A sweet task, truly! To be laying the bones of princes and lords

in consecrated ground as thick together as rogues in the stocks at

fair-time, and not the purchase of so much as a gum-wreath to show for

it!"

The two walked through the long deserted corridor overhanging the

cloisters, and entered the tenantless writing room. Naught had been

touched since that fateful Friday night, when Hugh had written the

letter for the strange knight. He recalled this now, as he took his

inkhorn from the dusty table.

"Oh--tell me, Peter," he said, "saw you aught of the Devon

gentleman--him to whom that letter was writ--he was in the Abbey

when----"

"Aye, more than once. He was holding you in his arms when Thomas and I

found you. A goodly youngster--a thought too hasty, it may be, but

sound at heart. He hath promised a year's masses for the dead Earl of

Devon, when things come right again. They were in some sort kinsmen.

And I have sown in his mind pious thoughts of, moreover, rearing an

altar-tomb in the Lady Chapel, with effigy and sculptured sides. Oh,

aye--he had food from me yestere'en here in this very room, and so

hotly pressed payment on me that----"

Even as the Sacristan spoke the veil of silence hanging like a pall

over the Abbey was rent by a shrill, piercing shriek from the

cloister-green below! Clambering to the table, and peering forth, Hugh

saw the figures of men running along the vaulted walks, and of others,

mailed, and with weapons, chasing them. From the church beyond

proceeded a great tumult, with angry shouts, and the clashing of steel.

The King's word was broken. The fugitives were being dragged from

sanctuary!

Above the noises of search and despairing flight which now filled the

air, there rose suddenly the sound of heavy footsteps near at hand.

Then the further door was flung open, and Sir Hereward Thayer,

breathless, bareheaded, and without his corselet, made hasty entrance.

His eyes brightened as they fell upon Peter.

"The wolves are on us," he said, "and we have not so much as a stick to

fend them off. It is no shame to hide. Where shall I find security,

good brother?"

"Alack! there will be none here!" cried Peter. "If they are in the

church itself, think you they will spare mere cells and offices?"

"Whither leads this room?" asked Sir Hereward, opening the middle door,

and looking in upon Peter's array of candles, banners, wreaths, and

palls. "Here, under these, I can make myself secret till the search be

done!"

Without further words, he lifted from the darkest corner a pile of

disordered linen stuffs, loose shrouds, and grave-cloths, and coverings

for coffins. The Sacristan, as he looked from the doorway, noted with

shrewd swiftness the gay colors of the morris-dresses underneath, and,

stepping forward, laid his hand upon them. Then Hugh, hurriedly, and

with faltering lips, told Peter what they were, and the story of their

guilty presence--and lo! the old monk laughed aloud.

Then suddenly--as the clamor of the chase deepened outside--Peter

hissed commands into Sir Hereward's ear.

"Get you into this motley in all haste! Lose no moment! Thus only can

you win outside and pass the gates, and go unquestioned through the

town!"

CHAPTER III.

HOW HUGH MET THE PRINCE.

Only a brief space later, Hugh and this new companion in painted fool's

clothes and with raddled cheeks made their way forth from the great

west gate to the green. No formless loitering of idle men-at-arms now

met their gaze. Straight lines of pikemen had been posted before each

entrance to church or monastery, and in the open space beyond stood

long regular ranks of other soldiers, with fluttering standards and a

forest of tall weapons--all newly burnished--ashine in the morning sun.

The twain, with as bold a front as might be, walked down this passage

of pikes until the captain of the watch, a burly, bearded man in

Flemish armor, stopped them with uplifted hand; and two dozen

pike-heads clashed down as by a single touch, to bar alike progress and

retreat.

[Illustration: "TWO DOZEN PIKE-HEADS CLASHED DOWN AS BY A SINGLE

TOUCH."]

"I am the scrivener of the Abbey," Hugh called out from within this

steel girdle, "and go forth to the Tolzey at behest of your master and

mine--the Lord Duke of Gloster."

"And this merry fellow; hath the Duke need for him likewise?" the

captain asked, with sharp glances. "I'm sworn his Grace looks more for

headsmen than for morris-dancers, as to-day's wind blows."

"Put thy queries to the Duke himself," said Hugh; "and hold us no

longer waiting here, as he waits at the Tolzey."

Grumbling in his beard, the captain dropped his hand, and the pikes

flashed upward. Hugh and the mock fool passed forth, and turned their

feet townwards across the trampled sward. At the church gate to their

right hand, a greater body of armed men stood, and beyond these, within

the churchyard, high plumes on knightly helmets nodded in the morning

breeze. Of what was going forward there the two saw nothing, but

hurried on, glad to pass unquestioned.

They came thus to the market-place, held clear by solid walls of

troopers, mailed, and armed to the teeth, behind whom the townsfolk,

now heartily of but one opinion, strove to win friends and peep between

steel shoulders into the open space. Still unmolested, the boy, bearing

his inkhorn and scroll well before him as a badge of craft, passed with

his companion to the side of the cross--where workmen toiled with axe

and mallet to rear a platform of newly hewn beams and boards--and held

his course straight to the Tolzey.

"Saw you what they build, there by the cross?" whispered Sir Hereward.

"It is a scaffold, where presently axes shall hew flesh and blood, not

logs." And then he added, "Whither go we; into the very tusks of the

boar?"

"Nay, but to get behind him," returned Hugh, in the same sidelong

whisper. "Halt you at the Tolzey door; mix there with the throng which

idly gapes upon the soldiery, until chance offers to steal through some

alley to the open fields."

"And you leave me there?"

"How shall it be otherwise? And--I say it now--farewell; the saints

protect thee!"

"A word," the masker whispered. "Art sure it was a knight who ordered

the letter to be writ?"

"None other. A knight in full battle harness. And--_Oh!_ God save us!

_It is he!_"

Before the low-browed Tolzey, or Toll-booth, a house of bricks on

timber, with projecting gallery reared over open pillars, an urgent

throng of citizens swarmed behind two rows of soldiers, to note the

uttermost of what was passing. This Tolzey--at once exchange and town

hall, court-house and jail--had in its long life seen strange things,

but nothing like unto to-day, when the King's brother, Richard of

Gloster, and John Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk, held bloody assize upon the

enemies of the King. Above the gable floated, side by side, two

standards of deep red stuff, on which were wrought, one the silver boar

of Gloster, Lord Constable of England, one the silver lion rampant of

Norfolk, Earl Marshal.

And at the porch, pushing their way through the press of onlookers

under the arches between the pillars, a knot of men-at-arms dragged

forward that same strange knight at whose bidding Hugh had written the

letter!

"Look! It is he!" the boy repeated breathlessly, quickening his pace

for the instant, then shrinking back dismayed.

Sir Hereward laid a firm hand on his arm. "I quit ye not here!" he

swore, between clenched teeth. "Hasten we forward, and into the

presence of the court."

"But--it means death to thee--" the boy began, as the other hurried him

on.

"Better a thousand deaths--by fire and molten lead--than that _this_

should happen," the other gasped. "Up with thy chin! They _must_ not

say us nay!"

What answers they gave, in what manner their arguments satisfied, the

twain barely knew. The chief matter was that they won their way into

the Tolzey, were borne up the foul, narrow staircase by the throng

close at the heels of the soldiers and their captive, and suddenly

found themselves stumbling over the threshold into a large room,

whereof one part was densely crowded, and one empty as a grave fresh

dug. A triple line of steel corselets, sallets, and bills, drawn from

side to side, split these parts asunder, and behind this line those in

authority at the door roughly made to drive the new-comers.

When Hugh had shown his writing tools and told his errand, they

smoothed their tone and bade him stand aside, in the cleared space. The

others--strange knight, his rude captors, the mummer-gentleman--all

were swallowed up behind the barrier into the throng which snarled, and

surged, and gnashed its teeth, in weltering heat and evil smells, under

the spell of the scent of blood.

After a little while there rose an echoing blast of trumpets from the

market-place without, riding as it were on the crest of a great wave of

cheering. Then hurriedly the officers brought forth from an outer room

two high chairs of state, gilded, and bearing the town's arms, and set

them upon the floor-cloth under a canopy, and put behind these, on

either side of the dais, other chairs and stools--and then bowed low as

the doors in the centre were flung open with loud knocks, and two

heralds, in blazoned tabards, entered. Behind these, with stately step,

by twos came a score of great warriors and lords, mailed to the throat,

and with pages bearing their cumbrous head-gear; then others of

distinction, for the most part advanced in years, who wore rich gowns

and chains, and held velvet caps in their hands; and lastly, two young

men in gowns who wore their caps on their heads. And one of these, of a

square, thick-featured aspect, with broad breast, and reddish hair, was

Earl Marshal of England, yet had scarce a look from any one, so bent

were all thoughts upon the other.

This other--clad in sober colors, with a broad chain upon his breast

and a black close-curling plume in his cap--came sedately forward and

sat in the large chair a hand's breadth in front of his companion's. He

let his glance rest easily upon the crowded half of the room, as if

noting things in idleness the while his mind was elsewhere.

The heralds called out each his master's exalted office, and what

matters they had come now to rightly judge upon; and Hugh, having been

seated at a desk by the window, hung with all his eyes to the face of

the youth in the foremost chair.

It was a thin, thoughtful face, dark of skin and with a saddened air.

The bended nose was long, the point well out in air to bespeak an

inborn swiftness of scent. And above, wide apart, there burned a steady

flame of great-hearted wisdom in two deep iron-gray eyes which embraced

all things, searched calmly and comprehended all things. This Prince,

though first subject and foremost soldier under the King, his brother,

was even now but nineteen years of age; and Hugh, gazing in rapt

timidity upon him, flushed with shame at thought of his own years,

close treading upon those of this Prince, and of his own weak

unworthiness.

The boy wrote down what the old men in gowns bade him say concerning

the dreadful things that now were toward, and, writing, contrived also

to look and listen with an awed, ashen face and bewildered mind.

Other soldiers had entered the room, and, making a weapon-lined lane

between the door and the throng, brought forward now, one after

another, the captive lords and knights taken red-handed from the Abbey

or found in hiding in the town. Each in his turn, with elbows

thong-bound at his back, with torn raiment and dishevelled if not

bandaged head, was haled before the dais, and looked into these

deep-glancing eyes of his boy judge.

Richard held them in his calm, engirdling gaze with never sign of heat

or pity, and to each spoke in tones high and sharp-cut enough for all

to hear, but of a level in cold dignity. When they in turn replied, he

listened gravely, with lip uplifted so that his teeth were seen. Ever

and again his fingers toyed with the hilt of the baslard at his girdle

the while he listened; and these to whom he hearkened thus trembled

rightly at the omen. When all needful words were spent, the Prince

leaned for a moment to his right and whispered apart with Mowbray, Duke

of Norfolk; but this for very form's sake, and not to seek counsel.

Then, still in the same chilled, equable voice, he would mete out the

judgment, suiting to each with apposite words his deliverance, whether

they should lose their heads for their treason on the morrow, or depart

under the King's mercy as free men, paying fines in gold or land, or

suffering no penalty whatsoever. Well nigh two score and ten passed

thus before the Prince, and of this number two-and-twenty were sent to

the block. Of these, the greatest in estate was Edmund Beaufort, Duke

of Somerset, blood-cousin to his judge, and to whom gray hairs had

brought neither wisdom nor control. With him Prince Richard parleyed at

length, pointing out how the Beaufort line of John of Gaunt, beginning

in dishonor with Katherine Swynford, and filtering through envious

trickery and disloyalty, would on the morrow run itself miserably out

in muddy lees upon the scaffold. And then they led the childless Duke

away amid the angered hootings of the crowd.

None but this Somerset, and Sir John Longstrother, who was called the

Prior of St. John's, had courage wherewith to accuse the King of broken

faith, in that he had sworn to give mercy to all who sought refuge in

the Abbey. To this young Gloster, still deadly calm, made answer that

the King had given no such pledge, but only granted some old monk's

prayer that all of gentle blood who met their death, either in battle

or on the scaffold, might be buried in the Abbey without dismemberment;

this, and nothing more.

Of a sudden, Hugh, grown at home among these horrors, saw advancing

under guard between the glittering lines of bills, the mailed figure he

knew so well. The boy held his breath as the strange Knight stood

before the dais, helmeted and erect--and as he noted that the

morris-dancer, fiercely pushing his way, had followed close behind.

"What now!"--it was Mowbray who spoke--"Who comes thus covered? Loose

us his helm!"

"I pray ye both," spoke the Knight, "suffer me to thus remain! It is as

easy to lose one's head in this fashion as another. I crave no other

mercy."

A pale, flitting smile played over the Prince's lips. "After such

stress of sober state affairs, cousin of Norfolk," he said, more

gently, "the jest is grateful. Hast brought thy morris-dancer with

thee, too, I note, good sir!"

The Knight swung round to follow Gloster's glance; then, after a

moment's earnest gaze upon the disguised man close at hand, turned with

closed eyes and hand on heart.

The Prince rubbed his hands softly together, and smiled again.

"Aye! lift us the basnet," he said to the soldiers standing guard. "The

jest will trip the better for more air and light"--and in a twinkling

the men had unfastened and raised the heavy helmet; and the Knight

stood, flushed and confused, no knight at all! but a young and

fair-faced woman, with loose golden hair tumbled sweetly upon her neck.

Richard's lips curled again, and his teeth gleamed under them, while

his eyes shone with a merry light.

"Most excellent!" he chuckled, looking to Mowbray's dull, puzzled face

in mock search for sympathy. "Now scrub us the paint off yon mummer's

cheeks, and let his head be bared. The jest goes bravely."

Before the astonished onlookers, this too was done, and Sir Hereward,

still arrayed to the throat in motley, with eyes sheepishly downcast,

stood revealed.

The young Prince covered the two, as they stood, with his mirthful

regard, and rubbed his palms together in silent enjoyment.

"Read me the riddle, Lady Kate," he said at last. "I guess thy errand

to these parts, and his is clear enough--perchance too clear!--but why,

if thou must trick him out in morris-dress, why bring him here?

Nay!"--as the lady would have spoken--"fear nothing; I like the jest

thus far, but comprehend it only in part."

"My Lord Duke," the lady said, throwing back her hair with a proud

gesture, "we were children together,--you and I,--you will credit my

word. I knew not till this moment that he was here, but deemed

him--left--behind on the field. And I came hither, not in your despite,

or your dread brother's, but to warn my friend here, Sir Hereward, of

treason menacing him in his own camp; and to that end, on Friday night,

sent I a letter to him where he lay, by my own servant's hand."

"This is the letter," said Sir Hereward simply, drawing from his breast

the folded paper with its broken seal.

The Prince bent forward, took the missive, spread it out upon his knee,

and read carefully through from first to last. "I grieve to learn of

your good sire's death," he said once, lifting his eyes, and then read

on, musingly. At last he smiled, and shook his head.

"I have full knowledge--none better, Lady Kate," he said, "of thy high

spirits and brave temper. Thou wert of the mettle of knights-errant

even in short clothes. But what I looked not for was this clerkly hand,

this deft scrolling of lines and letters." Still with dancing eyes he

held the paper up before the Earl Marshal. "Why, look you, cousin of

Norfolk! 'Tis as fair as any guild work from Bruges. And from a woman's

hand, mark ye!"

The lady hung her head and blushed, then, lifting it, smiled. "Your

Grace ever loved his jest," she said. "Alas, I am no clerk, nor would

be with a thousand years of teaching. I could more easily ride, by

night and day, across from Devon to save my--my friend, than mark a

straight line on paper."

"And who writ ye this?" pursued Richard, eying the scroll afresh.

"A youth in the Abbey," said the lady, and Sir Hereward pointed him out

where he sat.

Then suddenly Hugh, staring vaguely at all this, heard some one say in

his ear that his Grace had called for him, and felt another push him to

his feet--and then saw, as through a golden fog, that the Prince held

up a jewelled finger, beckoning to him. The boys heart thumped to his

throat with every step as he moved to the dais.

"It is thy hand, eh?" Duke Richard asked, with kindly voice, and the

lad could only bow and blush. One of the old men at the table had

brought forward as well the scrolls on which Hugh had written the day's

grim record, and the Prince glanced over these with a student's

lingering eye. Then, with a quaint smile and sigh, he said:--

"Behold how fair and goodly a thing is learning! Of ye three, this

stripling boy comes first in the race. Thou mightst have had thy ride

for naught, my Lady Kate, but for his craft. And thou, sirrah, mightst

have been murdered in thy camp, but for this same letter. And wert thou

set upon by these knaves?"

"Aye, your Grace," Sir Hereward replied, "and slew two, with some small

hurt to myself, and their fellows fled--to be butchered elsewhere--down

by the mill pit."

The Prince nodded his head in satisfaction, then more slowly spoke

again.

"Sir Hereward, were thy head a match for thy heart or thy vast sinews,

belike thou hadst not saved it to-day. 'Tis dull of wit, but belongs to

a simple valiant gentleman, and I will not lop it from his shoulders.

Get thee to Devon, and keep within the King's grace--and if the taste

for mumming rise in thee again, and will not down, go morris-dancing on

thine own estates--or hers. And thou--saucy Kate--go take thy man, and

make thy wit the complement of his slow honesty. But no tricks! Why,

silly pretty maid, didst think England was ruled by blind men! Thou

hadst not killed thy first horse, in Somerset, ere we knew of thee and

thy quest. And as for thy knight in motley, loud rumor preceded him

down the street to-day as if he had been the borough bellman."

Sir Hereward, holding the lady's hand, would at this have made some

speech of thanks, but that the Prince held up his finger to stop him.

"Nay--another day," he said, "perchance when we do send for thee to

come up to London town. Thy affairs have eaten up too much time, as it

stands. The saints speed thee, Lady Kate, and teach thee to write. In

this rude, topsy-turvy world, naught is secure but learning. Observe

what joy I have in this clerkly boy whose skilled hand mocks Master

Caxton's types in the Low Countries--but of that thou knowest nothing.

I am beholden to thee for the boy. This night I'll beg him of the

Abbot, and he shall be of my household at Baynard's. Go now. I am

aweary of good unlettered folk."

And as the twain, bowing, left the room, the Prince turned again to the

scrivener lad.

End of Project Gutenberg's The Deserter, and Other Stories, by Harold Frederic