CHAPTER I.

THE MAKING OF A SOLDIER.

Though more crests are blazoned nowadays than there are minutes in which the heralds may count them, yet old families still live, with roots deep down in rural England's soil, and nourish in quiet legends which, when they come to notice, are the fairest flowers in the garden of English folk-lore.

Such a tale the Tambows of Shropshire can tell. Once, it is dimly understood, the narrative was written out, and even printed from types in Caxton's own press. If this be true, the book has long been lost. But the story is worth keeping.

Dickon looked at this time to be well on in his teens. He was so tall and stout a lad that grown men spoke to him, now and again, as to one of themselves. Just what his age might be, however, it lay beyond mortal power to discover. His mother was long since dead. His native hamlet had been wiped by fire and sword from the face of the earth.

His father could remember nothing more of Dickon's birth than that it was either just before the Battle of Bloreheath in Stafford, or soon after the fierce fight at Mortimer's Cross in Hereford. The one would make him sixteen years old, the other scarcely more than fourteen. Whether it was sixteen or fourteen no living soul in England cared.

There was as yet no other name for him than Dickon--that is to say, any securely fastened name. He had been called Smithson, and even Smith, by word of mouth among strangers. But the rough men close at hand commonly hailed him with oaths, which pointed to no surname whatever. Indeed, surnames were matters strictly for his betters--for gentlefolk, or at the least for thrifty yeomen with a dozen cows or fourscore sheep on a walk.

There could never have been a thought, therefore, in Dickon's head as to what name was likest to stick to him, since of all unlabelled hinds in Salop surely he was the lowliest.

Thought, in truth, is an over-fine word for aught that went forward in Dickon's brain. He knew only some few things more clearly than did the horses and dogs about him.

He did know, first of all, that his grim master, who lived up in the castle just above, was named Sir Watty Curdle, and that the castle itself was Egswith. That he was Sir Watty's man was by far the most important thing there was for him to know; and that it might be kept always fresh before his eyes and patent to all others, this lord's device of two running hares, back to back, one turned upside down, was sewed upon the breast of Dickon's leather jerkin.

Dickon had more reasons for holding his master to be a foul ruffian and robber than the dumb brutes in stable and kennel could have possessed, though doubtless they, too, were of the same opinion. He knew, furthermore, that the king was a tall and fine young man, because he had seen him after Tewksbury. He knew that the Lady Curdle came from Cheshire, which was reputed to lie northward.

He knew that all men-at-arms who wore three stags' heads on their jackets were his natural enemies; and that it was thought better to be a soldier than the son of a smith. Sometimes he thought that it must be better to be dead than either.

Dickon's belongings were all on his back. He owned a thick shirt of rough woollen, which had been his share of the spoil of a Yorkist archer, slain the year before in a fray on Craven highroad. Formerly the lad had been harassed by dreams that the dead man, all shivering and frosted over, had come back for his shirt, but these dreams were past long since, and he wore the shirt now like a second skin, so wholly did it seem a part of him.

Over this shirt was drawn his leather tunic, which was becoming too tight. Under this were fastened with cowhide thongs the points of his old leathern hose, also strained now almost to bursting. His shoes were rude and worn contrivances of leather, bound on over ankle and instep with cords. His neck and tangled shock of yellow hair were hidden under a caped hood of coarse brown cloth.

In these garments he toiled miserably by day; in them he slept in his cold corner of the smithy floor by night. By night and day the solitary aspiration of his mind was for the time when he might escape his fathers curses and beatings, and bear a spear among the men-at-arms.

This chance came to him suddenly, on a December day, when the air over the Marches was so thick and gray and cold that men desired to fight, if only to keep their blood from chilling within them. Out of this chance proceeded strange things, the legend of which has lived these hundreds of years in Salop.

Sir Watty Curdle did what he dared toward being a law to himself. In the fastness of the Welsh mountains, just back of his domain, there were always whisperings of new Lancastrian plots and bold adventures. These drifted to Egswith Castle, on its steep, ugly crag, and made an atmosphere of treason there which hung over the Marches like a fog.

That Sir Watty had a rushlight's choice between King Edward and Queen Margaret no one ever believed. If it had suited his ends he would as easily have been the king's man. But since the hated Stanleys were cheek by jowl with the king, there could be nothing for Sir Watty but the other side.

Besides, he had grievances. That is to say, other gentlemen in the countryside had houses and fair daughters and plate and fat cattle. These things rankled in Sir Watty's mind.

Sir Watty rose on this December morning with his head clear from a month's carouse, with his muscles itching for sharp work, and with the eager sniff of rapine in his nostrils.

Word that sport was afoot ran presently about through the galleries and yards and clustering outer hovels within the high-perched walls of Egswith. Rough, brawny men forthwith dragged out haubergeons and sallets, and leathern jackets stuffed with wool, and smiled grimly over them and put them on.

Two troopers in sleeveless coats of plate mail, and heavy greaves and boots, came clanking down the jagged hill-path. They routed with loud halloos the threescore people who dwelt in the foul and toppling huts huddled at the foot of the crag, under the shadow of gray Egswith.

"Ho! Ho-o!" they bawled. "Out with you--out! out! Your lord rides to-day!"

A bustling crowd arose on the instant. Strong men swarmed in the open. Some were sent into the fields with horns to summon yokels who were grubbing among the roots. Others haled forth armor and saddle-gear, and bows and spears, and shouted joyous quips from group to group.

Dull-browed women, with backs bent like beasts of burden, brought food and hoods and such tackle at command, in sulky silence. Half-clad children hung about the doorways, gazing wonderingly. From the castle gates some horses were being led out; and about the high walls rang the shrill blare of trumpet-calls.

The two troopers, after setting all in motion outside, clanked their way into the smithy, and the black one, Morgan, he with a brutish face, seamed and gashed with red scars,--where only one eye remained to glare in rude arrogance,--kicked the door open, and cried out as he did so:

"Are you dead here, then? What are your ears for, fools? And no fire!"

Dickon crossed the floor of the smithy, and stood before the intruders.

"The old man will light fires no more," he said, with dogged indifference, pointing a sidelong thumb to the bundle of straw at the tail of the forge, beneath the bellows.

There, flat on his back, lay the smith, with wide-open, staring eyes, and a face of greenish-brazen hue; his huge grizzled beard spread stiffly outward like the bristling collar of some unclean giant vulture.

"He was ever a surly swine," Morgan growled. "Even as we need him most, he fails us thus!"

Dickon offered no opinion upon this. "It fell on him in the night," he said.

Morgan leant over as far as his iron casings permitted, to note what share of breath remained in the smith's body. Then he rose, and looked the lad from top to toe with his sullen single eye.

"Get you into his foot-gear, then, and follow on," he snarled curtly.

Then for the first time the other man-at-arms spoke. He was a huge, reddish warrior, with the shoulders of an ox, and a face which flamed forth from out the casings of his head-piece like a setting winter sun.

"Were it not better to leave him?" this Rawly asked. "If he chance to get his head broken, how will Sir Watty make shift for a smith?"

Morgan sneered this down. "The lout hath not the wit for the tenth part of a smith," he said. "Between this and Bromfield there are a dozen of the craft to be had at the bare mention of a halter."

Thus it was that a soldier's life opened before Dickon.

He made haste to don his father's sleeveless chain coat and sallet. Then, choosing a crossbow and sheaf of quarrels for himself, he gathered such other weapons as the smithy held, and carried them out into the open. Now the troop was forming, and the start close at hand.

The lad had seen many of these rallies for a raid; but this one, wherein he was to have part, had a new glory in his eyes. He rubbed shoulders with the men who were making ready against the ride. With the boldness of an equal he bore a hand to help them fit the armor to their backs. There was none to make him afraid. When a knavish hobler offered to force his cross-bow from him in exchange for a rusty pole-axe, Dickon smote him on the head with a full man's might and heart, and kept his weapon.

At last Sir Watty came stalking down the broken, winding path, with his chestnut stallion led prancing from rock to rock at his heels. Behind him came a score of men-at-arms, and then still other horses at halter.

The knight stopped on the boulder at the foot of the hill, that two men might lift him to the saddle. As he moved forward there arose a great, joyful shout and clanking bustle of men mounting to follow. Dickon was of the sorrier sort who must run on their own legs; but no man on armored steed was prouder than he.

Sir Watty sat with alert, poised lightness in his stirrups, as if the brigandines which cased him from nape to ankle had been of linen instead of close-set, burnished metal plates overlapping one the other like a fish's scales and planned with cunning joints. Gilt nails studded the angles of this glittering suit, and the body of it was covered with green velvet, with the two hares of Curdle wrought in gold upon the breast.

Unlike the lesser riders, he wore bascinet and gorget on head and neck, with light pauldrons, velvet-clad and shaped like eagles' talons, running out to his shoulders over the scaled mail.

There were unnumbered tales as to how Sir Watty had come by this princely harness, all of a likeness in that they imputed its possession to plunder. One might well credit this on looking at the man's face as he rode with lifted visor--the curved, bony, beak-like nose, the stone-gray eyes, the thin, brief line of lips twisted tight together--all as relentless and shrewd and cruel as something born of snake or hawk.

Clustering at his back rode thirty men-at-arms, no other knight among them. There were unfrocked monks, loose, wandering troopers, murderers, revolted townsmen and mere generic ruffians from anywhere on the face of the earth, all gathered to Egswith by the magnet of its lawless fame, and all risking life and facing punishment here and hereafter with Sir Watty because they knew him for a master knave and robber.

These wore ill-assorted armor, the random product of years of raiding--some nearly covered with iron, others with no more than a rusted haubergeon and battered sallet. Of weapons, too, there was as mongrel a show. Some bore hagbuts, or hand-guns, to be fired with powder, and had leather bags full of stone bullets hanging at their saddles. Among the others were crossbows with wyndacs and without, lances, bills, long and short pole-axes, and even spiked clubs of iron.

Dickon joined the score of footmen who turned into the road as the cavalcade filed by.

For a little these all trudged behind the horses, bearing their lighter cuirasses and caps and their long or cross-bows with easy spirits. It was a morning made for walking, with black frost holding the ground so stiff that it rang like stone under the clattering hoofs ahead. A sharp air tweaked nostrils and ears, and made the blood glow even in churlish veins.

It was to the footmen nothing short of delight to stride onward thus, with a captain in front who feared naught, and on one's shoulder a weapon of death.

Later in the day, when their course lay over a rough moorland stretch where bleak winds whistled, and hunger began to gnaw upon fatigue, the adventure became less joyful. Still Dickon pressed forward upon the freshest hoof-marks, gay of heart. Others, who carried more years and a staler fancy, began to lag. Then an interesting thing happened.

At a word from Morgan, huge Rawly and a dozen others wheeled out from the troop and, halting at the side of the highway in waiting till the footmen had passed, drew close in behind them.

To make the meaning of this more clear, some of these horsemen pleasantly pricked their spear-points into the weariest of those walking before them. Thereafter the whole body moved on more swiftly.

None of the peasants knew whither the expedition was proceeding. For the first few leagues, journeying down the valley of the little stream which rose back of Egswith, they had seen at a distance more than one frowning castle. But they had come near to no human habitation. Then had ensued the arduous march across the moor, with no sign of castle or roof-tree.

But now, some hours after high noon, they were advancing upon a better-ordered country, with smooth roads and farm-lands. The mountains on the right were farther away now, and hung pale blue upon the confines of the gray sky. There were farm-houses in view, and these were of a larger and more prosperous aspect than Dickon had seen before. The husbandmen seemed to have small appetite for fighting, too, for they could be discerned presently fleeing with their women, children, and cattle across their fields to woodland shelter.

The spectacle of people making their escape before his approach was new to Dickon. He swelled out his chest to a greater girth because of it, and forgot the heated aching of his feet.

Sir Watty permitted the men to enter and ransack one of these farm-places. No living soul was to be discovered, but of food there was plenty. Some of the older and wiser troopers knew where to look for gear of less transient moment. But the spoil was not of importance.

Soon they were all pressing on again, along the highroad traversing this peaceful and fertile plain. By and by an old archer who trudged by Dickon's side halted in surprise, and as he stepped forward again growled out in perplexed disquiet:--

"Nay--aught but that, Sir Waddy, aught but that!"

Dickon, looking ahead, noted that his lord, after a moment's parley, had turned his course to the left, and was leading the party into a narrow lane.

Some of the hoblers, mounted on their light nags, were sent flying off across fields still more to the left, and Morgan came galloping back to the rear of the column. When he had muttered some charge to Rawly and then set back again to join his chief, it became known that Rawly with his handful of horse and all the footmen were to continue on the highroad.

The lad would never have thought out what this division of forces signified, but the old archer, little by little, and more to hear his own voice than from kindness to the boy, informed his mind. The company had been split in twain because the quarry was near at hand, and must needs be surrounded.

This was good soldiery, but in the present case it would be useless. Sir Watty and every mother's son with him would be slain--the footmen as well as the rest. Of this there could be no tittle of doubt, the archer cheeringly insisted. He was a native of these parts, and knew the evil repute of the stronghold they were about to attack. Not a man-jack of them would ever find himself back upon this blessed highroad again! Of that he made certain.

Dickon listened to these astounding tidings without any very near sense of fear. To look Death in the eye seemed not an unnatural thing, now that he was a soldier and wore an iron jacket. But his blood chilled within him when he heard the answer to his idle query.

"Is it bigger then than Egswith?" he had asked.

The gray old archer, stealing an apprehensive glance about him, and whispering sidelong, replied:--

"There are no walls--that eye can see. But inside is a sorcerer who fights with magic fires, and can on the instant raise up battlements of poisoned adders and scorpions, and blow upon us with a wind so deadly that at its touch our flesh will melt from our bones. If yon men wist whither Sir Waddy led them, they would fall upon him first and tear him limb from limb."