by John Buchan
“Or?” Peter repeated.
“Or I can take you with me a little way underground — among the masterless folk who will soon be half our people. I ask no questions, my lord, but he at Wood Eaton warned me that you were a precious piece of goods that mattered much for the welfare of England. The gentles play their high games and the noise of them fills the world, but in the end it is the simple who decree the issue. Would you sojourn for awhile among the simple?”
“I was bred among them,” said Peter. “I would first see my foster-mother, the widow Sweetbread, who lives below Leafield on the forest edge. Do you know the place?”
“Nay, then, since you are Mother Sweetbread’s fosterling, you have already the right of entry among all the forest people. Well I know her. Her good-man, Robin Sweetbread, was my trusty comrade.” He seemed suddenly to look at Peter with changed eyes, as if a special password to his confidence had been spoken.
When they took the road again, so as to ford Evenlode and come down the Windrush side, Darking, while still wary in choosing obscure paths, was no longer silent. Friendliness now mingled with his dignity. He spoke to Peter like a respectful kinsman. He was quick to point out, here a derelict farm, there a ruined village, among the grassy spaces of the hills.
“‘Twas the little granges first, and then the hamlets, and now, if all tales be true, ‘twill soon be the proud abbeys. Nought of man’s work in England is steadfast, not even the houses he has built for God. What sends an earl to the block sends a churl to the gallows’ hill, and the churl’s wife and children to eat nettles by the wayside. None is safe to-day save those who do not raise their noses above the covert, and the numbers in the covert grow fast.”
“Are you among them?” Peter asked.
Darking lifted his head proudly. “No man can harm us of the old England and the older blood. Kings and nobles and priests may pass, but we remain. Ours is the fallentis semita vitæ, which is beyond the ken of the great.”
Peter cried out in surprise: “Have you the Latin?”
“A tag or two,” and a smile wrinkled the sallow cheeks.
Mother Sweetbread welcomed Peter as one recovered from the dead. She strained him to her breast and wept over him. “They said you were drowned,” she crooned. “Brother Tobias spoke a word in my ear that you still lived, but he warned me that I should never see you more. And now you come stepping like Robin Hood out of the woods, clad as a proper man and no clerk. Son Peterkin, you are now a man indeed.”
She had been a tall woman till age had bent her, and she had none of the deformity of the old peasant, crippled with ague and incessant toil. Her petticoat was coarse but spotless, and on her head was the snowy curch which was Peter’s clearest memory of his childhood. Out of her high-coloured old face looked two eyes as black as sloes. Merry eyes they still were, for mirth and she had never been strangers.
She prepared food for him, those dishes which she remembered him liking as a child, and set before him a jug of her own cowslip wine, heady as ale and scented of flowers. But she did not sit with him at meat, nor did Darking; they waited on him till he had finished, and then ate their meal.
Her eyes followed him hungrily, and now and then she would stroke his sleeve with her old fingers.
“You are still the lad I nurtured,” she said; “but you are grown too mighty for this nest. I thought you were an eyas with clipped wings that would never fly far from me. That was the hope of Brother Tobias, too, but God has ordered it otherwise. Once you favoured your mother, and I took it for a happy omen, but now, childing, I see your sire in you. You have that kindly sullenness in the eyes which men spoke of in his grace. Heaven send you a happier fate.” And she crossed herself and muttered a prayer.
“How long?” she asked of Darking. “Not till St Martin’s day? You have come among your own folk, Peterkin, and we must make you ready for your flight. You are safe among us, and maybe we can do something ere that day to help your fortunes. You will soar out of our ken, but we can make certain that, if your wings tire, there is cover where you can clap down.”
Darking took him to a hut in Wychwood in a patch of ashes above St Cyther’s well, which had been used sometimes to give a night’s shelter when the hunt was up in that quarter of the forest. There they made their dwelling, and it was as lonely as a hill-top, the new ranger not having yet taken up his office, and every verderer and forester being under the spell of Darking’s strange authority. There Darking took Peter in hand and taught him much not commonly known by those who have in their veins the blood of kings. The boy was country bred, and started with some equipment of wild lore, but presently he understood that he had dwelt hitherto only in the porches of nature, and that he was now being led into the inner chambers. “Have patience, my lord,” said his tutor. “Great folk live and move high above the common world. But now and then they come to ground, and it is well to have a notion of that ground where you must creep and cannot fly.”
So Peter learned the ways of weather — what was portended by rooks flying in line, and mallards roosting in the trees, and herons leaving the streams for the forest pools. He learned to read what haze signified at dawn and sunset, and to smell distant rain. He was taught the call and cry of all the things that ran and flew, to imitate a stoat’s whistle and a badger’s grunt, the melancholy trumpet of the bittern, and the broken flageolet of the redshank, the buzzard’s mewing and the grey crow’s scolding. Presently he knew the mark of every pad in mud or herbage and the claws that patterned the streamside shingle. Something he learned too of the medicinal lore of the woods, how to make febrifuge and salve, what herbs sweetened foul water, or quieted hunger, or put a wakeful man to sleep. He was a ready pupil at this lore, for it gave his mind something to work on in those weeks of idleness. Also it seemed to marry the new strange world into which he was entered with that old world he was forsaking. It was pleasant to think that he, who might yet be a king, should go first to school with the ancient simplicities of earth.
Darking gave him another kind of tutoring. He made him discard the clothes he had worn, and put on the rough garb of a lesser forester. And then, enjoining on him to hold his peace at all costs, he took him far and wide through the neighbourhood. They visited the fairs in the little towns and sat in alehouses listening to the talk of peasants. They joined themselves to wool convoys on the highroad, and attended the great wool markets in Northleach and Burford and Campden. One day they would eat their bread and cheese in a smithy, the next in a parson’s kitchen, and the third day in a cornfield with the harvesters at their noonday rest. Darking seemed to have a passport to any society, some word which set people at their ease and opened their mouths.
“You are school-bred and abbey-bred,” he said. “It were well that you should learn of the common folk on whose shoulders the world rests. If you are to be Jack’s master, it is time to know a little of Jack.”
Peter, with his memory full of pinched faces and furtive talk of oppression, and eyes that spoke more eloquently than words, shivered a little.
“What has become of merry England?” he asked. “It is a sad world you have shown me, and a dark. Most men are groping and suffering.”
“There is small merriment nowadays,” he was told, “save among the gilded folk at the top, and those who have sunk deep down into the coverts. But it is a world very ripe for change.”
Mother Sweetbread favoured a different kind of preparation. She was in her way a devout woman, but she believed in an innocent magic outside the sanctities of the Church. Like all peasants, she was a storehouse of traditional lore which had descended from days long before Christ came to England. Her special knowledge was of herbs and simples, some for medicines, but most for spells, since there was a motley of vague beings to be placated if one would live at ease. During Peter’s childhood she had practised many harmless rites on his behalf. She had tried to foresee his future by fire and running water. The way of it was that you flung a blazing wisp of straw into a stream at midnight
of a Thursday and repeated a benedicite and the rune “Fire burn, water run, grass grow, sea flow,” and then finished with a paternoster. But she had gained nothing that way except a fit of ague. She had striven to ward off evil from her charge by sticking a knife into a plant of helenium at sunrise on Michaelmas Day, in the hope that the proper demon would appear, whom at that hour and with such preparation she would have power to command. But no spirit, good or bad, had made himself visible, though the awaiting of him had been a business requiring all her courage. But with her herbs she had been more fortunate. She had mixed the juices of dill and vervain and St John’s wort, and it was to this application, accompanied by the appropriate words, that she attributed Peter’s notable freedom from childish ailments.
Now she must go further, and the next step was for a true initiate. There was a woman lived at Shipton-under-the-Forest, Madge Littlemouse her name, who was reported to be learned in the old wisdom, and yet whose doings had left her on the sheltered side of the law and the Church. Indeed, there was no breath of discredit against Madge; she never dried up the ewes or the kine with the charm —
“Hare’s milk and mare’s milk,
And all the beasts that bears milk,
Come ye to me . . .”
or brought pains and death to her neighbours with nigromantic images, or fasted the Black Fast against her ill-wishers. She was a meek-faced old woman, whose garden was full of bee-hives, and to her bees she would talk as to a gossip. For certain, there was no such honey as hers in all Cotswold; but there were those who said that her bees were more than bees, that they were familiar spirits. The miller of Chadlington had found her asleep one summer noon, and had seen bees issuing from her mouth and ears, so that, being then in liquor, he had been instantly sobered, and had sworn off ale for a twelvemonth. But Madge’s repute was not hurt by this tale. Beyond doubt she had power, but her magic was white and unhurtful — no trafficking with the horrid relics of dead men and foul beasts, no blasphemous juggling with the sacred chrism or the more sacred Host, but clean invocations to decent spirits, who might reasonably be called good angels.
This potent ally Mother Sweetbread desired to enlist on Peter’s behalf, and she especially desired that Madge should make him a ring, the possession of which would attach to him a friendly guardian spirit. So she managed to obtain during Peter’s visits some oddments of his belongings — a lock of his hair, the paring of a nail, a fragment of linen which had been worn next his body — indispensable things without which Madge would be helpless. The ring must be of silver, so for the purpose she sacrificed a precious buckle, the gift of her old mistress: and she offered Madge as her fee a gold noble out of her small hoard.
She spoke to Darking of what she had done. He was not less superstitious than she, but he shook his head.
“Remember what befell the lad’s father,” he said. “The beginning of the lord duke’s calamities was the prophecy that he would be King. ‘Twas one Nicholas, a Carthusian monk, that made it. There are some things too high for mortal men to meddle with.”
“Nay, Solomon,” she said. “I would not tempt God by such meddling. But I would make him a ring such as the great Cardinal had, which will assure his fortune and keep a good angel by his side.”
“What sort of angel had Wolsey?” Darking cried. “I have heard of that ring. It brought a devil named Andrew Malchus to do his will, and all men know the consequence.”
“This shall be decently and piously made, with prayers and paternosters,” she pleaded.
But Darking still shook his head. “Many a man has sought to secure a good spirit, and has found a fiend answer his call. I like not this dabbling in forbidden things. But go your ways, mother, for you are wiser than me. . . . I will tell you how you can best benefit my lord. Get Goody Littlemouse to tell him where treasure is hid and you will make his fortune secure. For, hark you, mother, my lord has nothing now but his name and his birth. He has no great estate to milk or vassals to arm; therefore he is but a tool in the hands of those who seek his interest just in so far as it serves their own. Give him his own privy purse, and, so it be large enough, he will be able to carry his head high.”
The old woman pondered the words, which had been spoken lightly enough, and from a chance remark or two later it appeared that she had taken counsel with Madge Littlemouse on the matter. One day Peter and Darking were overtaken by a violent thunderstorm which split a great oak before their eyes. Darking laughed, as he wrung the wet from his cap. “Mother Sweetbread is busy about treasure-trove and is raising foul weather.”
But one night he talked for a long time apart with the old woman.
“The hour of the summons is near,” he said, “and soon the lad will be out of our care. I have taught him where and how to find refuge, if all else fails. Presently he will be set on a pinnacle, but a pinnacle is poor footing, and he will be alone. I am for showing him where to find allies, besides those great ones who will companion him. . . . There will be a gathering soon of them we know of. I saw Catti the Welshman yesterday on the Burford road, and old John Naps was at the Rood Fair on Barton Heath, and there is word of Pennyfarthing in the Cocking dingle.”
Mother Sweetbread opened her eyes wide. “You would not take my lord into such company?”
“I would take my lord to any company that can strengthen his hands. Listen, mother. England is all of a turmoil nowadays, and no man knows which is the true road or who are his friends. There is dispeace in the King’s Court, and disorder in the Council, and disquiet in Parliament, and everywhere divided minds. But far down below there are those who know their own purposes and hang together like a nest of wasps. I would take my lord to the only part of England that is stable.”
CHAPTER V. THE PARLIAMENT OF BEGGARS
The first frosts began with October, and after the hot September suns the leaves yellowed fast and hung loose, waiting for the Martinmas gales. One evening Darking and Peter left their hut in Wychwood and took the road up Evenlode, while the forest behind them was a riot of colour, and the waterside meadows lay yellow as corn in the sunset. Both were shabbily dressed, Mother Sweetbread having obtained for the boy a suit which her husband had worn for twenty years at the winter woodcutting.
“You are my prentice for the nonce,” said Darking, “and you have no name save Solomon’s Hob.”
“Where are we bent?” Peter asked.
“To Kingham Waste. There is a place in the heart of it called Little Greece, where we shall meet with company. You must not open your lips, but follow me and gape like a bumpkin.”
“What company?”
“Strange company, my lord. I have told you that half England has gone to ground. This night you will see some of those who hold rule among the vagabonds. Little Greece is no common bowsing-ken. All trades have their laws and disciplines, and not less that which is the trade of idleness. You would think, maybe, that the limping rogue you meet on the road obeyed no law but his own desires and necessities. Yet you would be wrong. He is under as strict rules as any soldier of an army. To-night you will see some of his officers. Twice a year they meet to take counsel upon matters that affect their living, and in this beggars’ parliament you will see the men who govern all the vagabondage between Thames in the south and Severn in the west and Trent in the north.”
“Tell me of this strange world. I know nothing of it.”
“You could not. They keep wide of the King’s forests for the most part, though I have known a batch of wild rogues raid the deer. Nor will you find them often in the Oxford streets or the lanes about Oseney. But elsewhere they are thicker than crows on a March ploughland.”
Peter asked the origin of so great a multitude.
“The poor we have always with us,” Darking quoted. “There have always been the unfortunates whose craft has failed them, or who have come to odds with the King’s laws, and find it convenient to have no fixed habitation. But in the last fifty years there has been a breaking up of England, so that honest fellows,
with generations behind them of laborious forbears, have not known where to turn to for the next crust. Such are now on the roads. Also the end of the wars both here and abroad has deprived many soldiers of a trade. Then there are those who take willingly to the life because of the restlessness of their bones or the corruption of their hearts. Every year sees a fresh hatch-out. The King’s rabbling of the small religious houses has sent a new swarm abroad, and trebled the number of patricoes. Lastly, there are some who take the wallet for a deeper purpose at the bidding of great men. You must know that every vagabond must have his billet or licence duly signed and sealed, else he will be taken and whipped at the next town-end. Such billets can be granted by anyone in authority — justice, or knight, or noble, or churchman — and what easier for a great one, who wishes to know the truth of what is happening in England, than to equip his own men with such licences and send them forth to glean tidings? The device has not been practised by the King’s Council, but some, who like not the King, have used it freely. There are many of my Lord Avelard’s intelligencers abroad with the beggars.”
“Tell me of these beggars,” said Peter. “Are there several kinds of them?”
“As many as there are kinds of fly hatched out in summer. They have their own names, and their own manner of speech and way of business, and if I were to recite them all I should not have done by the morrow’s dawn. There are those known by the misdeeds they favour. Such are the rufflers and the rogues and the highwaymen, who use violence, and the coney-catchers and cozeners and hookers and horse-priggers and fraters who use guile. Some have their trades, like the tinkers and pedlars, the jugglers and the minstrels, the crowders and fortune-tellers and bearwards. Some are plain beggars; others practise different arts to excite compassion, as the palliards, who make sores on their bodies with ratsbane and spearwort — the abrahams who sham madness, and the cranks who counterfeit the falling sickness — the dommerers who are deaf and dumb, and the whipjacks who tell a lamentable tale of shipwreck at sea or have a father or brother made captive by the Turk. There are more varieties of calling in vagabondage than in honest trade, and more ranks and classes than at the King’s Court. And at the top of all are those whom they call the Upright Men, that are their captains and justices. Them we shall meet at Little Greece.”
