Forest Days: A Romance of Old Times

by G. P. R. James

  CHAPTER II.

  It was in the spring of the year, somewhere about the period which goodold Chaucer describes in the beginning of his Canterbury Tales,

  "Whanne that April with his shoures sote, The droughte of March hath perced to the rote, And bathed every veine in swiche licour, Of whiche vertue engendred is the flow'r:"

  it was also towards the decline of the day, and the greater part of thetravellers who visited the inn for an hour, on their way homeward fromthe neighbouring towns, had betaken themselves to the road, in order toget under the shelter of their own roof ere the night fell, when, atone of the tables in the low-pitched parlour--the beams of which musthave caused any wayfarer of six feet high to bend his head--might stillbe seen a man in the garb of a countryman, sitting with a great, blackleathern jug before him, and one or two horns round about, besides theone out of which he himself was drinking.

  A slice of a brown loaf toasted at the embers, and which he dipped fromtime to time in his cup, was the only solid food that he seemedinclined to take; and, to say sooth, it probably might not have beenvery convenient for him to call for any very costly viands--at least,if one might judge by his dress, which, though good, and not very old,was of the poorest and the homeliest kind--plain hodden-grey cloth, ofa coarse fabric, with leathern leggings and wooden-soled shoes.

  The garb of the countryman, however, was not the only thing worthy ofremark in his appearance. His form had that peculiarity which is notusually considered a perfection, and is termed a hump; not that therewas exactly, upon either shoulder, one of those large knobs which issometimes so designated, but there was a general roundness above hisbladebones--a sort of domineering effort of his neck to keep down hishead--which gave him a clear title to the appellation of hunchback.

  In other respects he was not an unseemly man--his legs were stout andwell turned, his arms brawny and long, his chest singularly wide for adeformed person, and his grey eyes large, bright and sparkling. Hisnose was somewhat long and pointed, and was not only a prominentfeature, but a very distinguished one in his countenance. It was one ofthose noses which have a great deal of expression in them. There was agood deal of fun and sly merriment about the corners of his mouth andunder his eyelids, but his nose was decidedly the point of the epigram,standing out a sort of sharp apex to a shrewd, merry ferret-like face;and, as high mountains generally catch the sunshine either in the riseor the decline of the day, and glow with the rosy hue of morning beforethe rest of the country round obtains the rays, so had the light of thevine settled in purple brightness on the highest feature of his face,gradually melting away into a healthy red over the rest of hiscountenance.

  He wore his beard close shaven, as if he had been a priest; but hiseyebrows, which were very prominent, and his hair, which hung in threeor four detached locks over his sun-burnt brow and upon his aspiringneck, though they had once been as black as a raven's wing, were nowvery nearly white.

  With this face and form sat the peasant at the table, sopping his breadin the contents of his jug, and from time to time looking down into thebottom of the pot with one eye, as if to ascertain how much was left.He stirred not from his seat, nor even turned his head away from thewindow, though a very pretty girl of some eighteen years of age lookedin at him from time to time, and his was a face which announced thatthe owner thereof had at one time of his life had sweet things to sayto all the black eyes he met with.

  At length, however, the sound of a trotting horse was heard, and thepeasant exclaimed, eagerly--"Here, Kate! Kate!--you merry compound ofthe woman and the serpent, take away the jack; they're coming now. Awaywith it, good girl! I mustn't be found drinking wine of Bourdeaux. Giveme a tankard of ale, girl. How does the room smell?"

  "Like a friar's cell," said the girl, taking up the black jack with alaugh. "Grape juice, well fermented, and a brown toast beside."

  "Get thee gone, slut!" cried the peasant, "what dost thou know offriars' cells? Too much, I misdoubt me. Bring the ale, I say--and spilla drop on the floor, to give a new flavour to the room."

  "I'll bring thee a sprig of rue, Hardy," said the girl; "it will giveout odour enough. Put it in thy posset when thou gett'st home; it willsweeten thy blood, and whiten thy nose."

  "Away with thee," cried the man she called Hardy, "or I'll kiss theebefore company."

  The girl darted away as her companion rose from his seat with anappearance of putting, at least, one part of his threat in execution,and returned a minute after, bearing in her hand the ale he haddemanded.

  "Spill some--spill some!" cried the peasant. But as she seemed to thinksuch a proceeding, in respect to good liquor, a sin and a shame, thepeasant was obliged to bring it about himself in a way which themanners of those days rendered not uncommon.

  The girl set down the tankard on the table, and, with her pretty brownfingers still wet with a portion of the ale which had gone over,bestowed a buffet on the side of the peasant's head which made his eartingle for a moment, and then carefully wiped her mouth with the cornerof her apron, as if to remove every vestige of his salute.

  As nearly as possible at the same moment that she was thus clearing herlips, the feet of the horse which had been heard coming, stopped at thedoor of the inn; and loud applications for attendance called the girlaway from her coquettish sparring with Hardy, who, resuming his seat,put the tankard of ale to his lips, and did not seem to find itunpalatable, notwithstanding the Bourdeaux by which it had beenpreceded. At the same time, however, a considerable change took placein his appearance. His neck became more bent, his shoulders were thrownmore forward; he untied the points at the back of his doublet, so thatit appeared somewhat too loose for his figure; he drew the hair, too,more over his forehead, suffered his cheeks to fall in, and by theseand other slight operations he contrived to make himself look fullyfifteen years older than he had done the minute before.

  While this was going on, there had been all that little bustle andnoise at the door of the inn which usually accompanied the reception ofa guest in those days, when landlords thought they could not testifysufficient honour and respect to an arriving customer without minglingtheir gratulations with scoldings of the horse-boys and tapsters, andmanifold loud-tongued directions to chamberlains and maids.

  At length the good host, with his stout, round person clothed inclose-fitting garments, which displayed every weal of fat under hisskin, led in a portly well-looking man, of about thirty, orfive-and-thirty years of age, bearing the cognizance of some noblehouse embroidered on his shoulder. He was evidently, to judge by hisdress and appearance, one of the favourite servants of some great man,and a stout, frank, hearty, English yeoman he seemed to be; a littleconsequential withal, and having a decidedly high opinion of his ownpowers, mental and corporeal, but good-humoured and gay, and as readyto take as to give.

  "Not come!" he said, as he entered, talking over his shoulder to thelandlord--"not come! That is strange enough. Why, I was kept more thanhalf an hour at Barnsley Green to be the judge of a wrestling match.They would have me, God help us, so I was afraid they would be herebefore me. Well, give us a stoup of good liquor to discuss the time; Imust not say give it of the best--the best is for my lord--but I do notsee why the second best should not be for my lord's man; so let us haveit quick, before these people come, and use your discretion as to thequality."

  The wine that he demanded was soon supplied, and being set upon thetable at which the peasant was seated, the lord's man took his place onthe other side, and naturally looked for a moment in the face of histable-fellow; while the landlord stood by, with his fat stomach,over-hanging the board, and his eyes fixed upon the countenance of hisnew guest, to mark therein the approbation of his wine which heanticipated. The lord's man was not slow in proving the goodness of theliquor; but, without employing the horn cup, which the host set downbeside the tankard, he lifted the latter to his mouth, drank a gooddeep draught, took a long sigh, drank again, and then nodded his headto the landlord, with
a look expressive of perfect satisfaction.

  After a few words between my host and his guest, in which Hardy took nopart, but sat with his head bent over his ale, with the look of a manboth tired and weakly, the landlord withdrew to his avocations, andthe lord's man, fixing his eyes for a moment upon his opposite;neighbour, asked, in a kindly but patronising tone--

  "What have you got there, ploughman? Thin ale,--isn't it? Come, take acup of something better, to cheer thee. These are bad times, ar'n'tthey? Ay, I never yet met a delver in the earth that did not find faultwith God's seasons. Here, drink that; it will make your wheat look tentimes greener! Were I a ploughman, I'd water my fields with suchshowers as this, taken daily down my own throat. We should have nogrumbling at bad crops then."

  "I grumble not," replied the hunchback, taking the horn, and drainingit slowly, sip by sip, "my crops grow green and plentiful. Little's thelabour that my land costs in tillage, and yet I get a fat harvest inthe season; and moreover, no offence, good sir, but I would rather bemy own man and Heaven's, than any other person's."

  "Not if you had as good a lord as I have," answered the serving-man,colouring a little, notwithstanding. "One is as free in his house as onSalisbury-plain; it's a pleasure to do his bidding. He's a friend, too,of the peasant and the citizen, and the good De Montfort. He's noforeign minion, but a true Englishman."

  "Here's his health, then," said the peasant. "Is your lord down inthese parts?"

  "Ay, is he," replied the lord's man--"no farther off than Doncaster,and I am here to meet sundry gentlemen, who are riding down this way toYork, to tell them that their assembling may not be quite safe there,so that they must fix upon another place."

  "Ho, ho!" said the peasant, "some new outbreak toward, against theforeigners. Well, down with them, I say, and up with the Englishyeomen. But who have we here?--Some of those you come to seek, I'llwarrant.--Let us look at their faces." And going round the table, witha slow, and somewhat feeble step, he placed his eye to one of the smalllozenges of glass in the casement, and gazed out for a minute or two,while the serving-man followed his example, and took a survey of somenew travellers who had arrived, before they were ushered into thegeneral reception room.

  "Do you know him?" asked the peasant. "I think I have seen that darkface down here before."

  "Ay, I know him," answered the serving-man. "He's a kinsman of the Earlof Ashby, one of our people, whom I came principally to meet. He's ahandsome gentleman, and fair spoken, though somewhat black about themuzzle."

  "If his heart be as black as his face," said the peasant, "I would keepwhat I had got to say for the Earl's ears, before I gave it to his,were I in your place."

  "Ha! say you so?" demanded the lord's man. "Methinks you know more ofhim, ploughman, than you tell us."

  "Not much," replied the other, "and what I do know is not very good, soone must be careful in the telling."

  "What keeps him, I wonder?" said the serving-man, after having returnedto the table, and sipped some more of his wine.

  "He's toying without, I'll aver," said the peasant, "with pretty Kate,the landlord's daughter. He had better not let young Harland, thefranklin's son, see him, or his poll and a crab-stick cudgel may bebetter acquainted. It had well-nigh been so three months ago, when hewas down here last."

  These words were said in an undertone, for while one of two servants,who had accompanied the subject of their discourse, led away the horsesto the stable, and the other kept the landlord talking before the inn,there was a sound of whispering and suppressed laughter behind the doorof the room, which seemed to show that the Earl of Ashby's kinsman wasnot far off, and was employed in the precise occupation which thepeasant had assigned to him.

  The serving-man wisely held his tongue, and, in a minute after, thedoor opened, and gave entrance to a man somewhat above the middle size,of a slim and graceful figure, the thinness of which did not seem toindicate weakness, but rather sinewy activity. He was dressed inclose-fitting garments of a dark marone tint, with riding-boots, andspurs without rowels. Over the tight coat I have mentioned, cominghalfway down his thigh, was a loose garment called a tabard, ofphilimot colour, apparently to keep his dress from the dust, and aboveit again a green hood, which was now thrown back upon his shoulders.His sword peeped from under his tabard, and the hilt of his daggershowed itself, also, on the other side. His air was easy andself-possessed, but there was a quick and furtive glance of the eyefrom object to object, as he entered the room, which gave theimpression that there was a cunning and inquisitive spirit within. Hisface was certainly handsome, though pale and dark; his beard was shortand black, and his hair, which was remarkably fine and glossy, had beenleft to grow long, and was platted like that of a woman. His hand waswhite and fine, and it was evident that he paid no slight attention tohis dress, by the tremendous length of the points of his boots, whichwere embroidered to represent a serpent, and buttoned to his knees witha small loop of gold. His hood, too, was strangely ornamented withvarious figures embroidered round the edge; and yet so great was theextravagance of the period, that his apparel would then have beenconsidered much less costly than that of most men of his rank, for hisrevenues were by far too limited, and his other expenses too many andtoo frequent, to permit of his indulging to the full his taste forsplendid garments.

  As this personage entered the room, the sharp glance of the serving-mandetected the figure of Kate, the host's daughter, gliding away from theopening door, but, turning his head discreetly, he fixed his eyes uponthe new-comer with a low reverence, advancing at the same time towardshim.

  The Earl's kinsman, however, either did not, or affected not to knowthe person who approached him, and the lord's man was obliged to enterinto explanations as to who he was, and what was his errand.

  "Ha!" said Richard de Ashby, "danger at York, is there? My good lord,your master, has brought us down here for nothing, then, it seems. Iknow not how my kinsman, the Earl of Ashby, will take this, for heloves not journeying to be disappointed."

  "My lord does not intend to disappoint the Earl," replied theserving-man; "he will give him the meeting in the course ofto-morrow--somewhere."

  "Know you not where?" demanded the gentleman; and, as the servantturned his eyes, with a doubtful glance, to the spot where the peasantwas seated, the other added, "Come hither with me upon the green, wherethere are no idle ears to overhear."

  If his words were meant as a hint for Hardy to quit the room, it wasnot taken; for the hunchback remained fixed to the table, havingrecourse from time to time to his jug of ale, and looking towards thedoor more than once, after Sir Richard and the lord's man had quittedthe chamber.

  Their conference was apparently long, and at length, first one of thegentleman's servants, and then another, entered the little low-roofedroom, and approached the table at which the peasant sat.

  "Hallo! what hast thou got here, bumpkin?" cried one of them--"wine forsuch a carle as thou art!" and, as he spoke, he took up the tankardfrom which the serving-man had been drinking.

  "That is neither thine nor mine," replied Hardy, "so you had better letit alone."

  "Heyday!" cried the servant of the great man's kinsman; "rated by ahumpbacked ploughman! If it be not thine, fellow, hold thy tongue, forit can be nothing to thee! I shall take leave to make free with it,however," and, pouring out a cup, he tossed it off.

  "You must be a poor rogue," said the peasant, "to be so fond ofdrinking at another man's cost, as not to pay for your liquor even by acivil word."

  "What is that he says?" cried the man, turning to his companion--for,to say sooth, although he had heard every word, he was not quiteprepared to act upon them, being one of those who are much moreready to bully and brawl, than to take part in a fray they haveprovoked--"what is that he says?"

  "He called thee a poor rogue, Timothy," said his companion. "Turn himout by the heels, the misbegotten lump!"

  "Out with him!" cried the other, seeing that his comrade was inclinedto stand by him, "Out with him!" and he ad
vanced, menacingly, upon thepeasant.

  "Hold your hands!--hold your hands!" said Hardy, shaking his head--"Iam an old man, and not so well made as you two varlets, but I don't'bide a blow from any poor kinsman's half-starved curs!--Take care, mymen!" and as one of them approached rather too near, he struck him ablow, without rising from his stool, which made him measure his lengthupon the rushes that strewed the floor, crying out at the same time, ina whining tone, "To think of two huge fellows falling upon a poor,deformed old body."

  It so happened that the personage whom the peasant had knocked down wasthe braver man of the two; and, starting up, he rushed fiercely uponhis adversary; which his companion espying, darted upon Hardy at thesame moment, and by a dexterous kick of his foot knocked the stool fromunder him, thus bringing the hunchback and his own comrade to theground together. He then caught their enemy by the collar, and held hishead firmly down upon the floor with both hands, as one has sometimesseen a child do with a refractory kitten.

  "Baste him, Dickon--baste him!" he cried.

  "I'll give him a dip in the horse-pond," said the other; "his nose willmake the water fizz like a red-hot horseshoe."

  At that moment, however, the noise occasioned by such boisterousproceedings called in pretty Kate Greenly, the landlord's daughter,who, although she had a great reverence and regard for all the servingmen of Richard de Ashby, was not fond of seeing poor Hardy ill-treated.Glancing eagerly round, while the peasant strove with his twoopponents, she seized a pail of water which stood behind the parlourdoor, and following the plan which she had seen her father pursue withthe bulldog and mastiff which tenanted the back yard, she dashed thewhole of the contents over the combatants as they lay struggling on theground.

  All three started up, panting; but the gain was certainly on the partof Hardy, who, freed from the grasp of his adversaries, caught up thethree-legged stool on which he had been sitting, and whirling itlightly above his head, prepared to defend himself therewith againsthis assailants; who, on their part, with their rage heightened ratherthan assuaged by the cool libation which Kate had poured upon them,drew the short swords that they carried, and were rushing upon the oldpeasant with no very merciful intent.

  Kate Greenly now screamed aloud, exerting her pretty little throat tothe utmost, and her cries soon brought in the lord's man, followed,somewhat slowly, by Richard de Ashby. The good landlord himself--havingestablished as a rule, both out of regard for his own person and forthe custom of his house, never to interfere in any quarrels if he couldpossibly avoid it, which rule had produced, on certain occasions, greatobtuseness in sight and in hearing--kept out of the way, and indeedremoved himself to the stable upon the pretence of looking after hisguests' horses.

  The lord's man, however, with the true spirit of an English yeoman,dashed at once into the fray, taking instant part with the weakest.

  "Come, come!" he cried, placing himself by Hardy's side, "two menagainst one--and he an old one! Out upon it! Stand off, or I'll breakyour jaws for you!"

  This accession to the forces of their adversary staggered the twoservants, and a momentary pause took place, in which their master'svoice was at last heard.

  "What! brawling, fools!" he exclaimed. "We have something else to thinkof now. Stand back, and let the old man go! Get you gone, ploughman;and don't let me find you snarling with a gentleman's servants again,or I will put you in the stocks for your pains."

  "I will break his head before he's out of the house," said one of themen, who seemed to pay but little deference to his master's commands.

  "I will break thine, if thou triest it," answered the lord's man,sturdily. "Come along, old man, come along; I will see thee safe out ofthe place, and let any one of them lay a finger on thee if he dare!"

  Thus saying, he grasped Hardy's arm and led him forth from the inn,muttering as he did so, "By the shoulder-bone of St. Luke, the oldfellow has got limbs enough to defend himself!--It's as thick as a rollof brawn, and as hard as a branch of oak! How goes it with thee,fellow?"

  "Stiff--woundy stiff, sir," replied the hunchback; "but I thank you,with all my heart, for taking part with me; and I would fain give you acup of good ale in return, such as you have never tasted out of London.If you could but contrive to come to my poor place to-morrow morning,"he added, dropping his voice to a low tone, "I could shew some countrysports, which, as you are a judge of such things, might please you."

  "It must be early hours, then," replied the serving-man. "Those thatdon't come to-night will not be here till noon to-morrow, it is true:but still I think I had better wait for them."

  "Nay, nay--come," said Hardy; "come and take a cup of ale with me,"and, after a pause, he added, significantly, "besides, there'ssomething I want to tell you which may profit your lord."

  "But how shall I find my way?" demanded the serving-man, gazinginquiringly in his face, but with no expression of surprise at theintimation he received.

  "Oh, I will shew you," answered the peasant. "Meet me at the churchstile there, and I will guide you. It is not far. Be there a littlebefore six, and you shall find me waiting. Give me your hand on't."

  The serving-man held out his hand, and Hardy shook it in a grasp suchas might be given by a set of iron pincers, at the same time advancinghis head, and adding, in a low tone,

  "Take care what you do--you have a traitor there! One of those men is anidget, and the other is a false hound, come down to spy upon good menand true."

  Thus saying, he relaxed his hold, and, turning away, was soon lost inthe obscure twilight of the evening.