The Deserter, and Other Stories: A Book of Two Wars

"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!"