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

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.

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.