When under cloud of fear he lay
A shepherd clad in homely grey.
--WORDSWORTH.
Simon Bunce came himself to conduct his new tenants to their abode. It
was a pleasant spot, a ravine, down which the clear stream rushed on
its course to mingle its waters with those of the ocean. The rocks and
brushwood veiled the approach to an open glade where stood a rude stone
hovel, rough enough, but possessing two rooms, a hearth and a chimney,
and thus superior to the hut that had been left on the moor. There were
sheds for the cattle around, and the grass was fresh and green so that
the sheep, the goat and the cow began eagerly feeding, as did the pony
which Hal and Piers were unloading.
On one side stretched the open moor rising into the purple hills, just
touched with snow. On the other was the wooded valley of the Derwent,
growing wider ever before it debouched amid rocks into the sea. The
goodwife at once discovered that there had been recent habitation, and
asked what had become of the former dwellers there.
‘The woman fretted for company,’ said Simon, ‘and vowed she was in fear
of the Scots, so I even let her have her way and go down to the town.’
The town in north country parlance only meant a small village, and Hob
asked where it lay.
It was near the junction of the two streams, where Simon lived himself
in a slightly fortified farmhouse, just high up enough to be fairly safe
from flood tides. He did not advise his newly arrived tenants to be much
seen at this place, where there were people who might talk. They were
almost able to provide for their daily needs themselves, excepting for
meal and for ale, and he would himself see to this being supplied from
a more distant farm on the coast, which Hob and Piers might visit from
time to time with the pony.
Goodwife Dolly inquired whether they might safely go to church, from
which she had been debarred all the time they had been on the move. ‘So
ill for both us and the lad,’ she said.
Simon looked doubtful. ‘If thou canst not save thy soul without,’ he
said, ‘thou mightst go on some feast day, when there is such a concourse
of folk that thou mightst not be noticed, and come away at once without
halting for idle clavers, as they call them here.’
‘That’s what the women folk are keen for with their church-going,’ said
Hob with a grin.
‘Now, husband, thou knowst,’ said Dolly, injured, though she was more
than aware he spoke with intent to tease her. ‘Have I not lived all this
while with none to speak to save thee and the blessed lads, and never
murmured.’
‘Though thy tongue be sore for want of speech!’ laughed Hob, ‘thou beest
a good wife, Dolly, and maybe thy faithfulness will tell as much in the
saving of thy soul as going to church.’
‘Nay, but,’ said Hal with eagerness, ‘is there not a priest?’
‘The priest comes of a White Rose house--I trust not him. Ay, goodwife,
beware of showing thyself to him. I give him my dues, that he may have
no occasion against me or Sir Lancelot, but I would not have him pry
into knowledge that concerns him not.’
‘Did not Sir Lancelot say somewhat of a scholarly hermit who might learn
me in what I ought to know?’ asked the boy.
‘Never you fear, sir! Here are Hob Halstead and I, able to train any
young noble in what behoves him most to know.’
‘Yea, in arms and sports. They must be learnt I know, but a noble needs
booklore too,’ said the boy. ‘Cannot this same hermit help me? Sir
Lancelot--’
Simon Bunce interrupted sharply. ‘Sir Lancelot knows nought of the
hermit! He is--he is--a holy man.’
‘A priest,’ broke in Dolly, ‘a priest!’
‘No such thing, dame, no clerk at all, I tell thee. And ye lads had best
not molest him! He is for ever busy with his prayers, and wants none
near him.’
Hal was disappointed, for his mind was far less set on the exercises of
a young knight than on the desire to acquire knowledge, that study which
seemed to be thrown away on the unwilling ears of Anne St. John.
Hob had been awakened by contact with his lady and her husband, as well
as with the old comrade, Simon Bunce, to perceive that if there were any
chance of the young Lord Clifford’s recovering his true position he
must not be allowed to lounge and slouch about like Piers, and he was
continually calling him to order, making him sit and stand upright, as
he had seen the young pages forced to do at the castle, learn how to
handle a sword, and use the long stick which was the substitute for a
lance, and to mount and sit on the old pony as a knight should do, till
poor Hal had no peace, and was glad to get away upon the moor with Piers
and the sheep, where there was no one to criticise him, or predict that
nothing would ever make him do honour to his name if he were proved ten
times a baron.
It was still worse when Bunce came over, and brought a taller horse, and
such real weapons as he deemed that the young lord might be taught to
use, and there were doleful auguries and sharp reproofs, designed in
comically respectful phrases, till he was almost beside himself with
being thus tormented, and ready to wish never to hear of being a baron.
His relief was to wander away upon the moors, watch the lights and
shadows on the wondrous mountains, or dream on the banks of the river,
by which he could make his way to the seashore, a place of endless
wonder and contemplation, as he marvelled why the waters flowed in and
retreated again, watched the white crests, and the glassy rolls of
the waves, felt his mind and aspiration stretched as by something
illimitable, even as when he looked up to the sky, and saw star beyond
star, differing from one another in brightness. There were those white
birds too, differing from all the night-jars and plovers he had seen on
the moor, floating now over the waves, now up aloft and away, as if they
were soaring into the very skies. Oh, would that he could follow them,
and rise with them to know what were those great grey or white clouds,
and what was above or below in those blue vastnesses! And whence came
all those strange things that the water spread at his feet the long,
brown, wet streamers, or the delicate red tracery that could be seen in
the clear pools, where were sometimes those lumps like raw flesh when
closed, but which opened into flowers? Or the things like the snails on
the heath, yet not snails, and all the strange creatures that hopped and
danced in the water?
Why would no one explain such things to him? Nay, what a pity everyone
treated it as mere childish folly in him to be thus interested! They did
not quite dare to beat him for it--that was one use of being a baron.
Indeed, one day when Simon Bunce struck him sharply and hard over the
shoulders for dragging home a great piece of sea-weed with numerous
curious creatures upon it, Goodwife Dolly rushed out and made such an
outcry that the esquire was fain to excuse himself by declaring that it
was time that my lord should know how to bide a buffet, and answer it.
He was ready and glad to meet the stroke in return! ‘Come on, sir!’
And Hob put a stout headless lance in the boy’s hand, while Simon stood
up straight before him. Hob adjusted the weapon in his inert hand, and
told him how and where to strike. But ‘It is not in sooth. I don’t want
to hurt Master Simon,’ said the child, as they laughed, and yet with
displeasure as his blow fell weak and uncertain.
‘Is it a mouse’s tail?’ cried Simon in derision.
‘Come, sir, try again,’ said Hob. ‘Strike as you did when the black bull
came down. Why cannot you do the like now, when you are tingling from
Bunce’s stroke?’
‘Ah! then I thought the bull would fall on Piers,’ said Hal.
‘Come on, think so now, sir. One blow to do my heart good, and show you
have the arm of your forebears.’
Thus incited, with Hob calling out to him to take heart of grace, while
Simon made a feint of trying to beat Mother Dolly, Hal started forward
and dealt a blow sufficient to make Simon cry out, ‘Ha, well struck,
sir, if you had had a better grip of your lance! I even feel it through
my buff coat.’
He spoke as though it had been a kiss; but oh! and alack! why were these
rough and dreary exercises all that these guardians--yea, and even Sir
Lancelot and his mother--thought worth his learning, when there was so
much more that awoke his delight and interest? Was it really childish to
heed these things? Yet even to his young, undeveloped brain it seemed
as if there must be mysteries in sky and sea, the unravelling of which
would make life more worth having than the giving and taking of blows,
which was all they heeded.