Part 7

The sun was shining so strongly that we could almost hear the shooting of his beams. The air was seen to throb. White dust lay thickly over grass, bush and tree. There was a dreadful stillness; the only sound that ourselves made not was the sickening hum of flies. We went slowly, with bracken-leaves bound about our heads and twined within our horses' browbands. When we had gone some two miles, there befell a great mishap. The stopper flew from the mead-flask at the saddle-bow of Anflete the reeve, and the mead gushed out. We had not time to catch any of it ere it lay frothing in the dust. And then, as though the devil strove to plague us, the other bottle, which mine own horse carried, burst also, and left us likewise liquorless.

But we bore on, until we came to a spot a few yards off the Ledbury highway, where the banks were steep and the bushes shady: indeed, all about was the woodland of the vill of Stoke, belonging to this same Edith the Lady, who had set a reeve therein to see to her rights and her profits. Seemingly she would not stay to look upon her own land, so fain was she for sight of Harold her brother. Near the joining of the ways, then, we waited. Our throats were as dry as a smith's bellows. My men had swallowed what little beer we had left before I could forbid them. At once I made the blockheads seek for water, thinking of the wants of those we had come to meet. Not one drop within a hundred yards in every quarter, though God knows there are springs and streams enough thereabouts in any common year! We stretched ourselves in what there was of shade, and soon we beheld them coming, a goodly company of ladies and armed men.

We went forward to greet them; the foremost of them got down from their saddles; the Lady of the English came stately towards me, smiled, and put her small hand in mine.

"Odda, right glad am I to meet with thee," she said. "Dost thou mind thee how at Winchester I let my head-rail fall from a window into the buckthorn-tree, and how thou didst climb in and get it again, and didst send it me by my mother's woman?"

I remembered. Being but a henchman of the stable, I could not myself go with it.

How gracious her smile! How mild her condescension! Great wonder was it throughout the land, I knew, that she should be so lowly-sweet. The Lady Edith was little like to Earl Godwin her father, the rugged, grim old man! Although at this time about forty-four years old, as I think, she was an exceedingly fair woman still. Her skin was white as walrus-bone, and very little wrinkled; her hair long, thick, and red-golden as ever it had been, for though she was now hooded and staidly wimpled, I saw it uncovered later on that morning, and I could find therein no grizzled strand. Her clothing? She was cloaked and hooded, meseemeth, in fallow hue--and a little cross, finely-wrought in silver, hung at her throat; but how can a man speak of women's garments? I know that her mouth was soft and kindly, and quivered a little sometimes when she was not speaking; and there were now black shadows beneath her big grey eyes--maybe from the hardship of her journeying.

"My lady," I answered, "I beg that ye will rest awhile, and eat of the food that I have here. Alack! I have no drink to set before you! We brought mead, but in the heat an hour agone it burst our bottles; and there is no water near at hand--we have but lately sought it."

The lady raised her hands to her brows in most weary wise.

"Good Odda," she said, notwithstanding, "I thank thee much for thy kindness in thus coming, and for all the pains that thou hast taken. And since thy mead was lost on my behalf, I thank thee for it also. Let us sit here awhile and eat, as thou sayest; we are sore anhungered, that is sure. And later we will go find my reeve at Stoke over yonder. He will doubtless have one drop of somewhat for us each to drink. We also emptied our flasks an hour ago, silly souls that we were!"

She had with her her mass-priest, her women, her men-at-arms, her thralls. We sat down upon the ground, and broke the pasty into portions, and dealt out my fine wheaten bread.

As she talked with me of the old days in her own home, suddenly we heard a noise in the woodland upon our right--a child's voice wailing--the voices of two children. Far away at first, then somewhat nearer. Two wandering children, crying fit to burst their bosoms. Great breathless, thirsty sobs, swelling every now and then to a despairing roar.

The lady had sprung to her feet, and had broken through the nearest bushes into the thicket beyond.

"Hither! hither!" she cried. "Come! Come! But where are ye? Weep no more--here is help!"

We all followed her. She walked onward, calling; they shouted still, and drew nearer and yet more near: at last they came forth, the little mites, upon a bare plot whereon we had halted. Boy and girl they were; five and seven years old they seemed: hand clasped in hand, cheeks grimy with dust which their tears had furrowed, faces flushed and seared by the mighty heat.

She ran to meet them, with outstretched arms. They ran to her, and caught at her skirts. The girl, the younger, cried, "We were lost!" and the boy said hoarsely, "Mother!... O mother, the world looks black.... Oh, my head, I cannot see!" and he had fallen flat at her feet before she could stay him.

The girl said, "Lady, my head--great smart have I also!" and her breath came thick and loud.

The Lady Edith gathered sorrel-leaves, and bound them about the heads of the bairns.

"It is not enough," said she then. "They must have water."

"There is no water here," Anflete my servant answered. "We sought it high and low before my lady's coming."

She wrung her hands in sharp woe.

"O Christ, have mercy!" she said. "O Mary, that art our mother, hasten--help!"

Then her passion seemed to leave her, and she knelt, and began to speak in still, low tones; but I heard her words.

"Father of all goodness," she prayed, "save these twain alive, who are more to Thee than the wild sparrows! Strengthen then, Lord, I beseech thee, the gift that Thou hast bestowed upon Thine handmaid!"

Having so said, she arose, and quickly bade her folk bear the children with them, and shade the little ones' heads. It was high noon now, but she flung her hood back, and her wimple fell away and hung down with the hood, so that her bright hair was laid bare, and her shapely neck and breast of ivory. Many a woman would have seemed light-minded, even wanton, so; but our Edith was queen in everything she did. Although the soil was burning, and scorched the feet through riding-boots, she began to walk swiftly, glidingly, around and about. She held her riding-switch, a toy with handle of gold and amber, bent bow-wise between her two hands. Her lips were parted, as those of one who breathes-in freshest air.

And we followed, a great awe upon us. We were once more in the lane where we had rested, when a gleam awoke in her eyes, which had become dark and shut off from earthly sight, and she sped ahead of us even faster than at first. She came to where the bank overhung, and was covered with sagging ferns, shrivelled and caked with dust. A shiver shot through her whole body, and the switch that she carried started and writhed as it had been a live snake.

"God be praised!" she exclaimed. "Here is water for them!" She stamped her foot. "Dig! dig! Bring spades--Oh, dig! Quick! Would ye see them die before your eyes?"

"Sebbe the charcoal-burner!" said Anflete. "I will fetch his spade."

Edith had snatched his war-axe from one of her men-at-arms and was hewing at the bank whereunder she stood; I hacked away with my broad knife; some of the others scratched with their hands. In a little while Anflete was back from the charcoal-burner's with spade and pick, and we got more skilfully to work. A homely croon was heard in the heart of the earth. A spot of moisture darkened the bottom of the hollow that we had made. One spadeful more, and up it bubbled--a little spring, but a strong one. There were stones still within the hollow, and we put back more to keep up the shifting sides; and into the bowl so made the water flowed, thick and clotted, truly, with the dust and flakes of sandstone, but how sweet to touch and taste! Oh, the happy noise of water in a thirsty land!

The Lady Edith dipped a clout in the well and bathed the heads and necks of the little ones, gave them to drink, and set them to lie in the shade. Soon the girl-child stirred and wept, and Edith lifted her up in her arms. A shrill cry made us all turn to behold a poorly-clad woman, hot and unkempt, who stumbled towards us, tears in her eyes and terror in her voice.

"Ye naughty ones!" she stormed at sight of the children. "Here have I been...."

Then she stopped short, with open mouth, and stared at the slender, bare-headed woman who held her younger child, until one whispered: "It is the King's Lady!" when she louted down upon her knees.

"Hush! hush!" said Lady Edith to her sobbing burden. "Fear not, sweetheart! Thou must go home now--go to thy mother indeed!" and she laid her in the arms of the kneeling woman.

Never had she been more lovely than in that moment, her face shining like a rose, her eyes most tender and brightly-beaming. When, a short while after, she turned from mother and child and came seeking me, a huge pity rushed up within me, and I think that she read that pity in my look.

"Dread lady," said I, being a little mazed, and all soft with ruth, "how goes it with our Lord the King?"

"Whenas I left my lord, all was right well with him," she answered. "He had some sickness in the spring, but it irked him little, truly, for his years. Such an holy life he leads, and yet he is so long-enduring towards them of worldly mind! It is great joy to me that I may see him sometimes, and be somewhat near him."

She crossed herself, and the fair light faded from her.

"Wherefore do I murmur?" said she. "Is not Jordan flood better than all the rivers of Damascus?"

And so saying, she folded her meek hands above her heart, and went her way.

I never saw her again. The well that she found for us abideth for her memorial: clear and cool in every weather--the freshest in all the countryside. I have often thought of her since that day; and I think of her more often now than ever in the long night hours that are not the drowsy hours when one has grown old. Dreams, Gundred, dreams--waking dreams, but idle things none the less! But sometimes meseemeth that her very self is near me, standing as I best knew her, arms outheld, face aglow. She lived and died childless; the old King had made an oath, they say, for fear he might fall short of heaven. Once or twice evil tongues have made free to slander her fame! She was staunch, I know, and flawless; and yet her heart was quick and warm. Girl, I have ever recked little of the greater deal of the saints to whom prelates bid us pray. Of God and of his goodness I reck much; and this is the saint whom I worship before all others, crowned in this world or uncrowned--Edith the well-beloved Lady, whom all her people honoured and pitied.

Richard the Scrob

"Better than mine, Kenric--better than thine!" said Grim. "Ever his are taken, and ours are left. Who will look at our sheep and our oxen when the Scrob's are by?"

Kenric withdrew the straw that he had been chewing from between his teeth, and ceased to stare at the white-limbed, red-spotted cattle in the pen before him.

"Eh! he buyeth for the Bishop," he mumbled. "And he buyeth for the folk of Hereford town. And for the Abbot of Leominster. And for the Prior of Wenlock. His salted meat is rowed upon Wye and upon Severn to feed the merchantmen of Bristol. Grim, this Frenchman is a worker of spells."

"And even so the beasts of his own breeding are such as thou wilt not meet with on any other man's land within the two shires. Heavier! Fatter! Sleeker! I would that his lord the devil would fly away with him soon! Hast thou but seen his woolsacks yonder? What other has such great store to sell? True, he can have little spinning at home, with no women."

"I have not seen him--Richard the Scrob," said vague Kenric, returning to his straw-munching. "Are not these sold already----"

"Kenric, stand not and grumble, with blind eyes," cried Munulf the maltman, who now accosted these two. "Here is a sight not often seen--the little widow, Kenric, the plump widow. Look up and behold the light of thine eyes, where she cometh, girt about with her husband's stalwart kinsfold."

"Hey? who?" Kenric rejoined. "Who cometh yonder? Alftrude the widow of Winge? Oh, aye, it is a pretty woman enough----"

"And should be rich woman enough," said Grim. "They are watchdogs indeed, the brethren of the Moor. I wonder that they let her show her nose at Ludford fair--so little and straight is it that many a man will love it, by heaven! My good wife pities Alftrude greatly. She will be widow to the end of her days, they ward her about so wilily."

"I know it, I know it!" wheezed Kenric. "And Ulwin, Alward, and Ednoth--they are three ill men to deal withal. Alack! no hope have I!" He summoned up a faint sigh of good-humoured resignation. "If but now thou found me grumbling," he explained, "it was at French Richard."

Munulf raked his fingers through his long yellow hair, and looked mysterious.

"I have heard cunning talk of late," said he "Men say that these outland folk that swarm about our King shall soon be outlanders twofold; for shall they not be bundled off, beyond the seas, whither they came? Earl Godwin called together his Mickle Gemot seven weeks ago. I would we knew how that has sped. Godwin is wont to bring about his will!"

"Why, my lords, he hath brought it about, the good Earl!" sounded in an excited cackle behind them. Hildred the ale-wife hastened to join the three speakers, her red face unusually resplendent with pride in being foremost retailer of news for that day. "A man of Worcester brought great tidings yestereve. Godwin is driving out the accursed Normans, every one--man, woman, child, and priest. Even Ralf our Earl, the King's nephew, shall go, though his mother were English Godgifu!"

"Bless the work!" exclaimed Grim. "These Normans have a knack of drawing to themselves the wealth that should be ours. There should be pickings, eh? for all true Englishmen!" He nudged Kenric, and whispered:

"H'st! see where Richard comes!"

Richard the Norman came up to his cattle-pen. He was a small man, slightly built, and of upright carriage, and he moved with a spring in his gait. He had an aquiline nose, a persistent chin, and a strong, exceedingly well-formed mouth; his eyes were dark and deeply-set beneath the fine straight line of brow, and they looked straight into the eyes of others. His face was clean-shaven like a cleric's, and more than ordinarily wrinkled about mouth, eyes, and brow for his age, which was a little over thirty; the black hair of his head was cut short at the nape of the neck and the top of the forehead. He wore a short tunic of dull-coloured cloth, and leather boots, and from his waistbelt hung a small, shabby leather bag. Behind him walked his two servants, Howel the Welshman, and his own countryman Perot.

"Good day, Thane Kenric," said Richard the Scrob. "Good day, lords both, and to you, worshipful Munulf."

"Ah! Good day, Richard Scrob's son."

"Warm weather for November. A very Martin's summer," said Richard.

"Aye," from Grim. "Oh, aye, right warm, this weather. It may become hot. It shall soon be hot for all Frenchmen!" he concluded savagely.

Richard seemed unconscious of Grim's words and of their tone. He unfastened the bag from his belt, opened it, and surveyed the contents complacently. Oswin, the maltman's son, a weak-kneed, loose-lipped youth, gave a laboured imitation of the Norman's air of detachment, a few yards away.

"Why, son," said Munulf, when he had finished guffawing at this specimen of his offspring's wit, "what bearest in thy bosom?" pointing to the opening at the neck of the lad's jerkin, where a small, dark head was seen to writhe.

"Oh, it is my weasel," Oswin replied. "He harms me not, for I feed him, but others he biteth. There are some shall feel his fangs before Holy Martin's fair is out, I warrant you, my father!"

"Here are the Moor folk at last. I shall sit down," Kenric announced portentously. He withdrew to the customary resort of thanes and great men on market-days, on holidays, and at all public functions held upon Ludford green--the huge elm whose boughs cast their shadow as far as the cattle-pen of Richard the Scrob. There he subsided upon a bench, and sent a serving-woman of the ale-wife's for beer.

The green was now crowded with buyers and sellers of every degree. Grim and Munulf, who leant upon the hurdles surrounding Richard's exhibits, saw the throng before them part to release a procession of two thralls, four lean oxen, four women in riding-mantles, and three corpulent men who wore the grimy remains of once-fine garments, and had pretentiously heavy gold ornaments at their necks and about their wrists and fingers. Three of the women were comely and commonplace: the pleasant person of the fourth could not have failed to command attention in any surroundings. She was young, of moderate height, and generously built; she was small-featured, white skinned, blue-eyed, and her lips were full and wholesomely red. Over her head and the greater part of her figure was a hooded cloak, evidently new, of periwinkle-blue cloth; and upon her breast lay her hair in long plaits of that soft shade which is not golden, nor brown, nor chestnut, but all three, and has yet an ashen-silver haze upon its surface when the sun shines behind it. Her gown was black, and much the worse for wear, and at the base of her throat gleamed a bunch of the spindle-tree's pink berries, fastened in place with a silver pin.

"Good day, or else good morrow, Ulwin," said Grim, scarcely attempting to veil the sneer in his voice. "Ye are late with your stock."

"Late--aye!" panted the eldest, fattest, most showily-dressed of the newly arrived men. "Aye--late! All for women--hindered by women! I ask you, fellows, what should women do at fair or market, if they bring not wares to sell? Squander good money! Bedizen themselves to the nines! Would God that I had let thee from coming forth in thy prideful gear!" he snarled at her of the blue mantle. "Did I not say that thou wouldst seem no better than a tumbling-girl in the eyes of the folk? Dost thou mind that my brother lies in his grave?"

Richard the Scrob's right hand closed upon the hurdle in a convulsive grasp.

"It is five years since he died," said the woman.

"Get behind me, and stay behind me, out of our way," said Ulwin. "See here, Alftrude, thou shalt not stir whence I now bid thee stand. I will not have thee waste our goods on womanish nothings. Geegaws and sweet foodstuffs, forsooth! What lacks the woman? Will she tell the world that we clothe her not nor board her?"

She made no reply. For a moment she looked him full in the face: there was no reproach in her gaze, but only contempt and a spice of derision; then she turned and walked calmly, with unflushed cheeks, to join the other women in the background, and stood with them. The market-crowd surged all about them.

"These are thine?" growled Ulwin to Richard, indicating the penned oxen.

"Mine they were," answered Richard. "I sold them to Edmund the flesher of Worcester this morning, when the fair was but new-begun. But I have others, Ulwin Ednoth's son, if ye wish to buy."

"Buy! Pah! no, not I! It is not of buying that I have to speak with thee, Richard."

"Of what then, worthy thane?"

"Indeed, it is not of buying that I have to speak with thee, Richard. Thou art learned in the law: because thou art so learned, the Lord Abbot deems thee worthy of his trust; but all thy cleverness could not teach thee.... How can I say, all-wise one, that thou didst not know? Well, the Lord Abbot knew not--aye, even I myself knew not--that Ashford, which thou callest thine, was not holden by us and by our father of the Abbot of Leominster, and that therefore neither the Abbot nor I might make over this land of Ashford to thee in exchange for ... such and so much cattle and silver ... two years ago."

"Ashford is mine. I have set up a mill there, with the Abbot's licence."

"Not thine, Richard the Scrob. I am Turstin of Wigmore's man for Ashford, and I may not go with it to any other lord;[15] and Turstin is wishful to uphold his right. As for thy mill ... well, thou hast made it, and there will be the tolls for me."

[15] He could not sell or convey it.

"If there be any flaw in our dealings, then is it matter for the moot."

"Now, understand me, thou!" shouted Ulwin, with a pompous gesture of the arms and an outward thrust of his swollen underlip. "That which thou hast tricked of me I will have again, yea, this day and this hour! Ulwin of the Moor is unwonted to waiting!"

"Then, Ulwin, understand thou that Richard of Overton is unwonted to brook such words from any. At the bidding of none do I yield up mine own."

Scarcely had Richard proclaimed his defiance than a thrill such as some much-desired presence imparts forced him to glance past the wrathful bully's left shoulder. The widow Alftrude was now close behind her brother-in-law, and studied the Scrob from head to foot with wide, wondering blue eyes.

"I have nowise tricked you, Ednoth's son," said he, his countenance once more unperturbed. "Ye did chaffer with me for silver. This is matter for the hundredmen. They shall hear and try it."

"Hearken, good neighbours, to the high and mighty words!" Ulwin jeered. "How will he speed when Englishmen are met together? Does he dream that their dooms are for the French?"

"Come from here, now, master!" cried the high-pitched voice of Richard's servant Howel, in which agitation was patent. Ednoth, Ulwin's brother, pushed past Howel and jostled him roughly, in order to draw nearer to the two disputants. Howel flung up his head, his eyes kindling, and hissed an imprecation under his breath.

"Hey? what hast thou there?" said Ulwin.

"Nought, nought," Ednoth answered. "It is but a Welshman who bars my way."

"No Welshman am I!" cried Howel the servant of Richard. "I am a man of Irchenfield--as good an Englishman as any of you here--and a better Englishman, too, than ye clumsy boors that think yourselves noblemen! When the King of the English marches with his army into Wales, we men of Irchenfield do go the foremost, that we may be the first to deal death, and----"

"Do they dance in Irchenfield?" piped the maltman's son, as he shambled out of the crowd and swiftly inserted a furry object between the collar of Howel's jerkin and the back of his neck.

"We shall soon see. Oh, merrily, right merrily--merrier and higher than in all Herefordshire else! On, on, brave Welshman! None here can hope to beat thee!"

Loud was the spectators' laughter as the victim bounced up and down, shaking and tossing his limbs, and twisting his head and his body. When Richard had succeeded in dragging the weasel from out of his serving-man's garments, Howel rushed forward, bent on reprisal. Ednoth, the primary cause of the trouble, happened to be the person nearest: in a second Howel had him by the throat, and his short knife gleamed bare.

Half a dozen bystanders instantly joined in the fray, most of them for the purpose of overwhelming the impudent Welshman of Irchenfield: in the midst of the turbulent knot were Ulwin, tugging at Ednoth's shoulders, and Richard, who held on to Howel by the arms and so compelled him to desist from stabbing at the Englishman.

"Peace, thou fool!" cried Richard. "Leave be, now, Howel my man! I will not be embroiled for idle pride of thine. God's death! put up thy dagger!"

Sullenly but promptly, Howel allowed his master to lead him out of the clutches of his assailants.