The Black Arrow / Черная Стрела. Книга для чтения на английском языке

“On!” said Dick; and he once more pelted forward, Matcham trailing in the rear. To say truth, they made but poor speed of it by now, labouring dismally as they ran, and catching for their breath like fish. Matcham had a cruel stitch, and his head swam; and as for Dick, his knees were like lead. But they kept up the form of running with undiminished courage.

Presently they came to the end of the grove. It stopped abruptly; and there, a few yards before them, was the high road from Risingham to Shoreby, lying, at this point, between two even walls of forest.

At the sight Dick paused; and as soon as he stopped running, he became aware of a confused noise, which rapidly grew louder. It was at first like the rush of a very high gust of wind, but it soon became more definite, and resolved itself into the galloping of horses; and then, in a flash, a whole company of men-at-arms came driving round the corner, swept before the lads, and were gone again upon the instant. They rode as for their lives, in complete disorder; some of them were wounded; riderless horses galloped at their side with bloody saddles. They were plainly fugitives from the great battle.

The noise of their passage had scarce begun to die away towards Shoreby, before fresh hoofs came echoing in their wake[39], and another deserter clattered down the road; this time a single rider, and, by his splendid armour, a man of high degree. Close after him there followed several baggage-waggons, fleeing at an ungainly canter, the drivers flailing at the horses as if for life. These must have run early in the day; but their cowardice was not to save them. For just before they came abreast of where the lads stood wondering, a man in hacked armour, and seemingly beside himself with fury, overtook the waggons, and with the truncheon of a sword began to cut the drivers down. Some leaped from their places and plunged into the wood; the others he sabred as they sat, cursing them the while for cowards in a voice that was scarce human.

All this time the noise in the distance had continued to increase; the rumble of carts, the clatter of horses, the cries of men, a great, confused rumour, came swelling on the wind; and it was plain that the rout of a whole army was pouring, like an inundation, down the road.

Dick stood sombre. He had meant to follow the highway till the turn for Holywood, and now he had to change his plan. But above all, he had recognised the colours of Earl Risingham, and he knew that the battle had gone finally against the rose of Lancaster. Had Sir Daniel joined, and was he now a fugitive and ruined? or had he deserted to the side of York, and was he forfeit to honour? It was an ugly choice.

“Come,” he said, sternly; and, turning on his heel, he began to walk forward through the grove, with Matcham limping in his rear.

For some time they continued to thread the forest in silence. It was now growing late; the sun was setting in the plain beyond Kettley; the tree-tops overhead glowed golden; but the shadows had begun to grow darker and the chill of the night to fall.

“If there was anything to eat!” cried Dick, suddenly, pausing as he spoke.

Matcham sat down and began to weep.

“Ye can weep for your own supper, but when it was to save men’s lives, your heart was hard enough,” said Dick, contemptuously. “Y’ ’ave seven deaths upon your conscience, Master John; I’ll ne’er forgive you that.”

“Conscience!” cried Matcham, looking fiercely up. “Mine! And ye have the man’s red blood upon your dagger! And wherefore did ye slay him, the poor soul? He drew his arrow, but he let not fly; he held you in his hand, and spared you! ’Tis as brave to kill a kitten as a man that not defends himself.”

Dick was struck dumb.

“I slew him fair. I ran me in upon his bow,” he cried.

“It was a coward blow,” returned Matcham. “Y’are but a lout and bully, Master Dick; ye but abuse advantages; let there come a stronger, we will see you truckle at his boot[40]! Ye care not for vengeance, neither – for your father’s death that goes unpaid, and his poor ghost that clamoureth for justice. But if there come but a poor creature in your hands that lacketh skill and strength, and would befriend you, down she shall go!”

Dick was too furious to observe that “she.”

“Marry!” he cried, “and here is news! Of any two the one will still be stronger. The better man throweth the worse, and the worse is well served. Ye deserve a belting, Master Matcham, for your ill-guidance and unthankfulness to me-ward; and what ye deserve ye shall have.”

And Dick, who, even in his angriest temper, still preserved the appearance of composure, began to unbuckle his belt.

“Here shall be your supper,” he said, grimly.

Matcham had stopped his tears; he was as white as a sheet, but he looked Dick steadily in the face, and never moved. Dick took a step, swinging the belt. Then he paused, embarrassed by the large eyes and the thin, weary face of his companion. His courage began to subside.

“Say ye were in the wrong, then,” he said, lamely.

“Nay,” said Matcham, “I was in the right. Come, cruel! I be lame; I be weary; I resist not; I ne’er did thee hurt; come, beat me – coward!”

Dick raised the belt at this last provocation; but Matcham winced and drew himself together with so cruel an apprehension, that his heart failed him yet again. The strap fell by his side, and he stood irresolute, feeling like a fool.

“A plague upon thee, shrew!” he said. “An ye be so feeble of hand, ye should keep the closer guard upon your tongue. But I’ll be hanged before I beat you!” and he put on his belt again. “Beat you I will not,” he continued; “but forgive you? – never. I knew ye not; ye were my master’s enemy; I lent you my horse; my dinner ye have eaten; y’ ’ave called me a man o’ wood, a coward, and a bully. Nay, by the mass! the measure is filled[41], and runneth over. ’Tis a great thing to be weak, I trow: ye can do your worst, yet shall none punish you; ye may steal a man’s weapons in the hour of need, yet may the man not take his own again; – y’are weak, forsooth! Nay, then, if one cometh charging at you with a lance, and crieth he is weak, ye must let him pierce your body through! Tut! fool words!”

“And yet ye beat me not,” returned Matcham.

“Let be,” said Dick – “let be. I will instruct you. Y’ ’ave been ill-nurtured, methinks, and yet ye have the makings of some good, and, beyond all question, saved me from the river. Nay, I had forgotten it; I am as thankless as thyself. But, come, let us on. An we be for Holywood this night, ay, or to-morrow early, we had best set forward speedily.”

But though Dick had talked himself back into his usual good-humour, Matcham had forgiven him nothing. His violence, the recollection of the forester whom he had slain – above all, the vision of the upraised belt, were things not easily to be forgotten.

“I will thank you, for the form’s sake,” said Matcham. “But, in sooth, good Master Shelton, I had liever find my way alone. Here is a wide wood; prithee, let each choose his path; I owe you a dinner and a lesson. Fare ye well!”

“Nay,” cried Dick, “if that be your tune, so be it, and a plague be with you!”

Each turned aside, and they began walking off severally, with no thought of the direction, intent solely on their quarrel. But Dick had not gone ten paces ere his name was called, and Matcham came running after.

“Dick,” he said, “it were unmannerly to part so coldly. Here is my hand, and my heart with it. For all that wherein you have so excellently served and helped me – not for the form, but from the heart, I thank you. Fare ye right well.”

“Well, lad,” returned Dick, taking the hand which was offered him, “good speed to you[42], if speed you may. But I misdoubt it shrewdly. Y’are too disputatious.”

So then they separated for the second time; and presently it was Dick who was running after Matcham.

“Here,” he said, “take my crossbow; shalt not go unarmed.”

“A crossbow!” said Matcham. “Nay, boy, I have neither the strength to bend nor yet the skill to aim with it. It were no help to me, good boy. But yet I thank you.”

The night had now fallen, and under the trees they could no longer read each other’s face.

“I will go some little way with you,” said Dick. “The night is dark. I would fain leave you on a path, at least. My mind misgiveth me, y’are likely to be lost.”

Without any more words, he began to walk forward, and the other once more followed him. The blackness grew thicker and thicker; only here and there, in open places, they saw the sky, dotted with small stars. In the distance, the noise of the rout of the Lancastrian army still continued to be faintly audible; but with every step they left it farther in the rear.

At the end of half an hour of silent progress they came forth upon a broad patch of heathy open. It glimmered in the light of the stars, shaggy with fern and islanded with clumps of yew. And here they paused and looked upon each other.

“Y’are weary?” Dick said.

“Nay, I am so weary,” answered Matcham, “that methinks I could lie down and die.”

“I hear the chiding of a river,” returned Dick. “Let us go so far forth, for I am sore athirst.”

The ground sloped down gently; and, sure enough, in the bottom, they found a little murmuring river, running among willows. Here they threw themselves down together by the brink; and putting their mouths to the level of a starry pool, they drank their fill.

“Dick,” said Matcham, “it may not be. I can no more.”

“I saw a pit as we came down,” said Dick. “Let us lie down therein and sleep.”

“Nay, but with all my heart!” cried Matcham.

The pit was sandy and dry; a shock of brambles hung upon one edge, and made a partial shelter; and there the two lads lay down, keeping close together for the sake of warmth, their quarrel all forgotten. And soon sleep fell upon them like a cloud, and under the dew and stars they rested peacefully.

Chapter VII

The Hooded Face

They awoke in the grey of the morning[43]; the birds were not yet in full song, but twittered here and there among the woods; the sun was not yet up, but the eastern sky was barred with solemn colours. Half starved and over-weary as they were, they lay without moving, sunk in a delightful lassitude. And as they thus lay, the clang of a bell fell suddenly upon their ears.

“A bell!” said Dick, sitting up. “Can we be, then, so near to Holywood?”

A little after, the bell clanged again, but this time somewhat nearer hand; and from that time forth, and still drawing nearer and nearer, it continued to sound brokenly abroad in the silence of the morning.

“Nay, what should this betoken?” said Dick, who was now broad awake.

“It is some one walking,” returned Matcham, “and the bell tolleth ever as he moves.”

“I see that well,” said Dick. “But wherefore? What maketh he in Tunstall Woods? Jack,” he added, “laugh at me an ye will, but I like not the hollow sound of it.”

“Nay,” said Matcham, with a shiver, “it hath a doleful note. An the day were not come —”

But just then the bell, quickening its pace, began to ring thick and hurried, and then it gave a single hammering jangle, and was silent for a space.

“It is as though the bearer had run for a paternoster-while, and then leaped the river,” Dick observed.

“And now beginneth he again to pace soberly forward,” added Matcham.

“Nay,” returned Dick – “nay, not so soberly, Jack. ’Tis a man that walketh you right speedily. ’Tis a man in some fear of his life, or about some hurried business. See ye not how swift the beating draweth near?”

“It is now close by,” said Matcham.

They were now on the edge of the pit; and as the pit itself was on a certain eminence, they commanded a view over the greater proportion of the clearing, up to the thick woods that closed it in.

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Примечания

1

King Henry VI – король Англии Генрих VI (1421– 1471), в его правление началась Война алой и белой розы, на которой он и был убит

2

King Harry the Sixt – (уст.) король Генрих VI

3

goes to bed Lancaster and gets up York – ложится спать Ланкастером, а просыпается Йорком (две ветви королевской семьи, боровшиеся за королевский трон; на гербе Ланкастеров была алая роза, на гербе Йорков – белая, отсюда и название войны)

4

Harry the Fift – (уст.) Генрих V (1387–1422), король Англии, вел войну с Францией, победил в битве при Азенкуре (см. В. Шекспир «Генрих V»)

5

Lollards – лолларды, народные проповедники, участники антикатолического движения в Англии (с начала XIV в.)

6

Dick, Tom, and Harry – (разг.) каждый встречный и поперечный, средние люди

7

by your leave – (разг.) с вашего позволения

8

I wot not how – (уст.) я уже не знаю, как

9

they were counting their corn before the harvest – ср. русск. делят шкуру неубитого медведя

10

this runs hard on sacrilege – (уст.) это просто святотатство

11

Ye shall have your will of it – (уст.) Я выполню вашу просьбу

12

I will run my peril of that loss. – (уст.) Эту потерю я как-нибудь переживу.

13

he that rides softliest rides surest – (уст.) тише едешь – дальше будешь

14

He has a loose tongue – (разг.) У него язык без костей

15

I misdoubt it not = I don’t doubt it, я не сомневаюсь

16

by Roman soldiery – (уст.) римскими солдатами (в I в. н. э.)

17

Here be none to trouble you. – (уст.) Здесь тебя никто не обидит.

18

he shall smart for all! – (уст.) он за все ответит!

19

of what favour is she? – (уст.) как она выглядит?

20

come what may – (уст.) будь что будет

21

A cat may look at a king. – (посл.) Смотреть ни на кого не возбраняется (и простые люди имеют свои права).

22

got wind of it – (разг.) узнает об этом

23

that makes a life I owe you. I swim like a cannonball – (уст.) теперь я обязан тебе жизнью. Я плаваю как топор.

24

let us on – (уст.) надо идти дальше

25

I do but jest – (разг.) да я просто шучу

26

I am all at sea. – (уст.) Я ничего не понимаю.

27

Grey Friar – (разг.) монах-францисканец

28

they are our butts – (уст.) они – наша цель

29

canary wine – (уст.) белое вино

30

whet before a meal – (уст.) закуска перед основным блюдом

31

Would ye have me credit thieves? – (уст.) Ты хочешь, чтобы я верил шайке воров?

32

for the life of him – (разг.) ни за что на свете

33

if ye play me false – (разг.) если обманешь меня

34

soon thought better of that – (разг.) вскоре передумал

35

the lords of the dark rose – приверженцы клана Ланкастеров

36

bit the dust – (уст.) пал на поле брани

37

now began to shoot in earnest – (уст.) теперь стали стрелять прицельно

38

It was, indeed, high time for them to run. – (разг.) А им и впрямь надо было поторапливаться.

39

in their wake – (разг.) у них за спиной

40

you truckle at his boot – (уст.) и ты сдашься (подчинишься)

41

the measure is filled – (уст.) чаша терпения переполнена

42

good speed to you – (уст.) доброй тебе дороги; попутного ветра

43

in the grey of the morning – (разг.) когда начало рассветать