CHAPTER XV.

RAVENSHAW FALLS ASLEEP.

"Thou liest. I ha' nothing but my skin, And my clothes; my sword here, and myself." --_The Sea Voyage._

Captain Ravenshaw headed his horse for the Canterbury road, and, having soon left the town behind him, began to feel a pleasant content in the sunlight and soft air. The fresh green of spring, the flowers of May, the glad twitter of birds, met his senses on every side. Never since his boyhood had the sight and smell of hawthorn been more sweet. He conceived he had, for once, earned the right to enjoy so fair a day. He was tired and bruised, but he looked forward to rest upon his arrival. Peace, comparative solitude, country ease, seemed so inviting that he had not a regret for the town he left behind.

His road, at the first, was that which Chaucer's pilgrims had traversed blithely toward Canterbury. He had a few villages to ride through, clustered about gray churches, and drowsy in the spring sunshine; a few towered and turreted castles, a few gabled farmhouses, to pass in sight of. But for the most part his way was by greenwood and field and common, up and down the gentle inclines, and across the pleasant levels, of the wavy Kentish country. Often it was a narrow aisle through forest, with great trunks for pillars, and leafy boughs for pointed arches, and here and there a yellow splash where the green leaves left an opening for sunlight. And then it trailed over open heath dotted with solitary trees or little clumps, and along fields enclosed by green hedgerows. It was a good road for that time, wide enough for two riders to pass each other without giving cause for quarrel; ditchlike, uneven, rutted, here so stony that a horse would stumble, there so soft that a horse would sink deep at each step.

Ravenshaw had already turned out of the Canterbury road to the left, and was passing from a heath into a thick copse, when suddenly the narrow way before him became blocked with human creatures, or what seemed rather the remnants of human creatures, that limped out from among the trees at the sides.

He drew in his horse quickly to avoid riding over any one, while the newcomers thronged about him with outstretched palms and whining cries:

"Save your good worship, one little drop of money!" "A small piece of silver, for the love of God!" "Pity for a poor maimed soldier!" "A few pence to buy bread, kind gentleman!" "Charity for the lame and blind!"

"Peace, peace, peace!" cried the captain. "What be these the greenwood vomits up? Hath the forest made a dinner of men, and cast up the pieces it could not stomach?"

Pieces of men in truth they looked, and of two women also. All were in rags; the men had unkempt beards and hair; those that did not go upon crutches showed white eyes, or an empty sleeve, or great livid sores upon face and naked breast, or discoloured bandages; one of the women, fat and hoarse-voiced, went upon a single leg and a crutch; the other woman, a gaunt hag, petitioned with one skinny hand, and pointed with the other to her colourless eyeballs.

"Let go; I am in haste; I have no money," said Ravenshaw, for one of the men--a white-bearded old fellow poised on his only foot--had taken firm hold of the bridle near the horse's mouth.

But, so far from the man's letting go, some of his companions seized upon Ravenshaw's ankles, and the chorus of whines waxed louder and more urgent. With his free hand he reached for his dagger; but the lean woman, having already possessed herself of the handle, drew it from the sheath ere he knew what she was doing. He clapped his other hand to his sword-hilt; but his fingers closed around the two hands of a dwarf on a man's shoulders, who had grasped the hilt, and who now thrust his head forward and caught the captain's knuckles between his jaws.

"Oho!" exclaimed Ravenshaw, changing to a jovial manner. "I see I have walked into Beggars' Bush. Well, friends, I pray you believe me, I am a man wrung dry by war and ill fortune, and little less a beggar than any of ye. I have chanced upon a slight service will keep my body and soul together; if I lose time here I shall lose that. I have nothing but my weapons, which I need in my profession, and my clothes, which would not serve you in yours. The horse I require for my necessary haste, and--"

"He lies, he lies!" shrieked the lean hag, striking the pocket of Ravenshaw's breeches. "Hearken to the chinking lour! A handful!"

"A piece of gold for a poor maimed soldier!" cried the white-bearded man, whipping out a pistol from his wide breeches, whereupon other of the rogues brandished truncheons and staves. At sight of the clubs, Ravenshaw made a wry face, and his bruised body seemed to plead with him. He had one hand free, with which he might have seized the dwarf's neck, but he thought best to use it for holding the rein and guarding his pocket.

"Ay, there's money in the pocket," he said; "but I spoke truth when I said I had none. This is not mine; 'tis another man's, to whom I must pay it to-morrow."

"Let the other man give us charity, then!" cried the fat woman.

"Ay, we'd as lief have another man's money as yours," said the white-bearded rogue, aiming the pistol. The lean hag tried to force her hand into Ravenshaw's pocket, and men caught his clothing by the hooks at the ends of their staves.

"Nay, maunderers!" cried Ravenshaw; "shall not a gentry cove that cuts ben whids, and hath respect for the salamon, pass upon the pad but ye would be foisting and angling?"--

"Marry, you can cant," said the white-bearded beggar, his manner changing to one of approval, which spread at once to his associates.

"As ben pedlar's French as any clapperdudgeon of ye all," replied the captain.

"Belike you are a prigger of prancers," said the beggar, looking at the horse.

"No, my upright man, a poor gentry cuffin, as I have said, but one that hath passed many a night out-of-doors, and now fallen into a little poor service that I am like to forfeit by my delay. As for the lour in my pocket, I am a forsworn man if I deliver it not to-morrow. So I beg, in the name of all the maunders I have stood friend to in my time--"

"A ben cove," said the upright man. "Mort, take off your fambles; brother rufflers, down with your filches and cudgels. By the salamon, the canting cuffin shall go free upon the pad."

Released on every side, no more threatened, and his dagger restored to its sheath, the captain looked gratefully down upon the grotesque crew. As he did so, his nose became sensible of a faint, delicious odour, borne from a distance. He sniffed keenly.

"Cackling-cheats," said the chief beggar. "Our doxies and dells are roasting 'em in a glade yonder. Plump young ones, and fresh. We filched 'em but last darkmans. We be toward a ben supper, and you are welcome,--though we lack bouze."

The captain sighed. He had not dined; the fresh air of the country had whetted his stomach; roast chickens were good eating, hot or cold; and he had gathered, from the vague replies Jerningham had made to his inquiries about provisions, that his diet at the Grange would be a rather spare one of salt meat, stockfish, milk, and barley-cakes.

"Alas, if I durst but tarry!" He looked to see how far behind him the sun was, and then shook his head and gathered up his reins. "I must hasten on--tis a sweet smell of cookery, forsooth!--how soon, think you, will they be roasted?"

"Oh, half an hour, to be done properly."

"Then I must e'en thank ye, and ride on. I durst not--" He broke off to sniff the air again. "Marry, I have a thought. You lack bouze, say you? Now at the place whither I am bound, there is ale, or my gentleman has lied to me. I shall be in a sort the master there, with only a country wench and an old doting man--Know you Marshleigh Grange?"

"Ay," spoke up a very old cripple; "the lone house 'twixt the hills and the marshes; there hath been no ben filching there this many a year; the wild rogues pass it by as too far from the pads; neither back nor belly-cheats to be angled there."

Ravenshaw addressed himself again to the bearded chief of the beggars, received answer, passed a jovial compliment, and rode on alone in cheerful mood. In due time he turned into the by-road which accorded with Jerningham's description; and at length, emerging from a woody, bushy tract, he came upon a lonely plain wherein the one object for the eye was a gray-brown house, huddled against barn and outbuildings, at the left of the vanishing road,--a house of timber and plaster, warped and weather-beaten, its cracked gables offering a wan, long-suffering aspect to the sun and breeze. This was the Grange.

A short canter brought Ravenshaw to the rude wooden gate, studded with nails, in the stone wall that separated the courtyard from the road, which here came to an end. Ere the captain had time to knock, or cry "Ho, within!" the gate swung inward on its crazy hinges, and a thin, bent old man, with sparse white hair and blinking eyes, shambled forward to take the horse. At the same time, as further proof that Ravenshaw had been looked for, a woman appeared in the porched doorway of the house, and called out:

"Jeremy will see to your horse. Come within."

Ravenshaw looked at her with a little surprise; this robust, erect, full-coloured, well-shaped creature, upon whom common rustic clothes took a certain grace, and whose head stood back in the proud attitude natural to beauty, was scarce the country wench he had expected to meet. But he said nothing, and followed her into the hall. This was a wide, high apartment of some pretension, its ceiling, rafters, and walls being of oak. Bare enough, it yet had the appearance of serving as the chief living-room of the occupants of the house. Upon an oak table, at which was an old chair, stood a flagon of wine and some cakes. Meg offered Ravenshaw this repast by a gesture, while she scrutinised him with interest.

"Wine?" quoth he, promptly setting to. "'Tis more than I had thought to find."

"There is some left since the time when--when Master Jerningham used to come to the Grange oftener," said Meg. "Ale serves for me and old Jeremy."

"Troth--your health, mistress!--I am glad you have ale in store. Would there be enough to entertain a few guests withal--some dozen or score poor friends of mine, if they were travelling this way? To tell the truth, I should not like to waste this wine upon such."

"Travellers never pass this way," said Meg, plainly not knowing what to make of him.

"Oh, we are some way from the highroad here, indeed; but a foolish friend or so might turn out a mile for the pleasure of my company."

"I know not what you'd set before 'em to eat, if there were a dozen."

"Marry, they would have to bring eatables with 'em,--my reason for having 'em as guests. Only so there be ale enough."

"Oh, there is ale," said Meg, without further comment.

Ravenshaw, munching the cakes, and oft wetting his throat, looked around the hall. The front doorway faced a wide fireplace at the rear, now empty. At the right was a door to a small apartment, a kind of porter's room, lighted by a single high narrow window; farther back in the hall was the entrance to a passage communicating with other parts of the house; and still farther back, a door leading to the kitchen. At the left hand were, first, a door to a large room, and, second, the opening to a passage like that on the right.

By way of this left-hand passage, and a narrow staircase which led from it, the captain was presently shown by old Jeremy to his chamber. It was large and bare, hung with rotten arras, and contained a bed, a joint-stool, and a table with ewer and basin; its window looked into the courtyard.

He flung his bruised body on the bed, and soon sank deliciously to sleep.

Meanwhile old Jeremy, returning to the hall, found Meg sitting with her chin upon her hands, and gazing into the empty fireplace.

"A sturdy fellow," whispered the old man, pointing backward with his thumb, and taking on a jocular air. "Cast eyes on him; a goodly husband mends all; cast eyes on him!"

"Thou'rt a fool; go thy ways!" quoth Meg; but she did not move.