*THE CAPTAIN OF THE WIGHT*
*CHAPTER I.*
*HOW THE GERFALCON SPED.*
In front of an old ivy-covered manor house, so built, with its
projecting wings, as to form three sides of a quadrangle, a boy was
standing, idly leaning his arms on the stone coping of the low wall
which shut in the fourth side of the courtyard.
The boy was well grown, with fair, ruddy face, and brown hair, cut,
after the picturesque fashion of the latter half of the fifteenth
century, straight above his eyebrows, but falling in wavy masses on each
side of his face. His eyes were bright, and full of life. His
strongly-knit frame gave promise of strength and activity, and his age
might well have been put at seventeen or eighteen even, so tall was he,
and well grown, although, in truth, he was not more than fifteen.
The free life in the fresh Hampshire air, blowing from the sea, over
forest, gorse-covered common, and well-tilled fields, had given play to
his thews and sinews.
It was evening. The sun was just setting over the blue hills covered
with woods, interspersed with heathy patches. Far as the eye could see,
there were gently-swelling undulations, with a loftier hill looming out
of the grey mist which rose, film-like, behind the nearer masses of the
russet forest. Here and there some larger expanse of mist looked like a
lake amid the overhanging trees, while over all brooded the silence of
the evening, when all nature pauses in reverence to the setting sun,
broken only by the lowing of some distant kine, or the faint hum of a
beetle as it went booming by.
Suddenly the boy stood up, listened attentively, then, springing through
the gateway, he darted down the road in front of the house, to meet a
horseman who was riding up the forest glade.
The man was singing blithely as he rode, and the refrain of each verse
rang merrily in the stillness of the evening. It was the sound of this
which had told the boy of the new comer's approach.
"Ringwood, my hound, with a merry taste,
All about the green wood began caste,
I took my horn and blew him a blast
With tro-ro-ro-ro! tro-ro-ro-ro!
With hey go bet! hey go bet! ho!
There he goeth, there he goeth, there he goe,
We shall have sport and game enowe,"
rang out clear over the wood, and cheerily the boy answered,--
"In sooth, Humphrey, thou'rt in fine voice to-night; but, prythee, cease
thy song for a while, and give me the gerfalcon, that I may see her."
"Certes, Master Ralph, thou wilt be well pleased anon. 'Tis the veriest
sweetest little bird for mounting a heron, or springing a pheasant, as
ever I did see. There, stroke her cautiously; see how she manteleth and
warbelleth her wings."
So saying, the serving man, or varlet, as the falconer's assistants were
called, stooped down and held out his right hand, which was protected by
a stout leathern glove with a large gauntlet. Two leather thongs,
called lunes, were connected by two rings or tyrrits, and the lunes were
then fastened to the jesses, and the ends loosely twined round the
little finger, to prevent the bird from escaping.
The bird was gaily hooded, and turned its head from side to side,
causing the little artificial plume of feathers on its head to shake and
flutter gaily.
The boy, in his eagerness to stroke his new possession--for it was his
birthday, and his father had sent to Salisbury to buy this hawk for his
favourite son--put out his hand too quickly, for the hawk made a peck at
it; but he drew it back in time, and with more caution and gentle words
he at last succeeded in stroking her wings and back.
"Marry Humphrey, she is a fine one. She is a long hawk, and ought to
fly well."
"I' faith! will she so. I got her rare cheap; for the price has risen
mightily sithen the tolls have been laid on all hawks. 'Tis one
shilling and eightpence, over and above the price of the bird, I had to
pay to Brother Anselm for the licence of bringing her over; but I got
her cheap, marry, did I! An you'll find such another in all the south
of England--ay, and the north too--for ten shillings, never call me
Humphrey more."
They had now reached the gateway where Master Ralph, as Humphrey called
him, had been waiting for his birthday present. The groom took off the
leather glove and gave it to Ralph, who put it on, and took the bird
into the house to show to his father and mother, while Humphrey rode
round to the stables.
The interior of the hall was a large low oak-panelled room, with a wide
fireplace on one side. Antlers, spears, bows, and bills were hung or
fixed all along the walls, and a few skins of red deer and other wild
animals lay about on the stone floor. Ralph crossed the hall, and went
down a low dark passage. He paused at a little oak door, and tapped.
"Come in," said a lady's voice, and Ralph entered joyously.
"Oh, mother, look! She's a hawk fit for the emperor. Thank thee,
father, thank thee; 'tis the best gift thou couldst have chosen!" And
the boy went up to the large armchair, in which an old man was sitting,
clad in a long robe of fur, while opposite to him was standing his wife,
the Dame Isabel de Lisle.
"Ay, my son, so thou art right joyous, art thou? Well, and that's e'en
as it should be. Thou art growing a stout lad, and 'tis time to be
thinking of thy after life. I would fain have ye all started in the
world, before God sees fit to call me to him; and methinks 'twill not be
long now."
"Why, father, what ails thee, that thou talkest thus dolefully?" said
Ralph, his ardour damped by the tone of his father's remarks.
"Nay, child," said his mother, stroking the glossy, waving hair of her
son, who had doffed his cap the moment he entered his parents' presence,
"nay, child, 'tis naught but the old wound thy father hath gotten at
Barnet grieveth him to-night."
"May-be, may-be, fair wife," said the old knight, who always called his
lady "fair," although she was certainly considerably past the age when
any claims to fairness might reasonably be supposed to have been
surrendered; but in his eyes she was always fair. "Perchance 'tis
naught; but my mind misgiveth me, and I would fain talk gravely to my
sons to-night. If God wills that I should live, well and good--if not,
well and good too; leastways, I shall have settled matters aright before
I go hence."
"But, father, thou hast not looked at my falcon that thou gavest me.
See what a long hawk it is; and what a gay lune Brother Anselm hath put
on it."
"Ay, marry, fair son, 'tis a fine bird, and will spring a partridge
rarely, I'll venture. Thou must fly her to-morrow--there's many a
gagylling of geese, or sord of mallards, down Chute Forest way."
"Certes, father, I'll e'en try her at a heron first."
At this moment another step was heard outside, and two other boys came
in; one a good deal older, and the other a year younger than Ralph.
"Well, Ralph, what hast got there?" said the elder, coming up and
looking at the bird. "Marry she's a fine hawk, but I'd rather have had
a falcon gentil."
"Ay, ay, and pay twenty shillings for it, let alone the toll of forty
shillings in bringing of her into the kingdom."
"Nay, thou mightest have gotten one cheap from old Simon Bridle. He
knows where all the best birds are to be got--all through the country
side--"
"Nay, Jasper, why dost try to put the lad out of countenance with his
pretty bird? Thou knowest she is a good bird, and thou wouldst be glad
enough to have her thyself," said his mother.
"Now leave we this talk of the gerfalcon, and sithen you are all here,
and 'tis yet half an hour to supper, let me hear what you, my sons,
would wish to do after I am dead and gone. Jasper, you are the eldest,
to you will fall my Bailiwick of Chute Forest, my manors of Chute, Holt,
and Thruxton, and many other fair lands. Now wouldst thou go to the
court, and seek to increase thy estate, as did thy great-grandfather Sir
John Lisle of blessed memory, or wouldst thou stay at home, and take
place and rank in thine own county?"