“By my hilt! then, I have found a man at last!” shouted the bowman. “And, ’fore God, you are a better man than I take you for if you can lay me on my back, mon garçon. I have won the ram more times than there are toes to my feet and for seven long years I have found no man in the Company who could make my jerkin dusty.”
“We have had enough bobance and boasting,” said Hordle John, rising and throwing off his doublet. “I will show you that there are better men left in England than ever went thieving to France.”
“Pasques Dieu![66]” cried the archer, loosening his jerkin, and eyeing his foeman over with the keen glance of one who is a judge of manhood. “I have only once before seen such a body of a man. By your leave[67], my red-headed friend, I should be right sorry to exchange buffets with you; and I will allow that there is no man in the Company who would pull against you on a rope; so let that be a salve to your pride. On the other hand, I should judge that you have led a life of ease for some months back, and that my muscle is harder than your own. I am ready to wager upon myself against you, if you are not afeard.”
“Afeard, thou lurden!” growled big John. “I never saw the face yet of the man that I was afeard of. Come out, and we shall see who is the better man.”
“But the wager?”
“I have nought to wager. Come out for the love and the lust of the thing.”
“Nought to wager!” cried the soldier. “Why, you have that which I covet above all things. It is that big body of thine that I am after. See, now, mon garçon, I have a French feather-bed there, which I have been at pains to keep these years back. I had it at the sacking of Issodun, and the king himself hath not such a bed. If you throw me, it is thine; but, if I throw you, then you are under a vow to take bow and bill and hie with me to France, there to serve in the White Company as long as we be enrolled.”
“A fair wager!” cried all the travellers, moving back their benches and trestles, so as to give fair field for the wrestlers.
“Then you may bid farewell to your bed, soldier,” said Hordle John.
“Nay; I shall keep the bed, and I shall have you to France in spite of your teeth, and you shall live to thank me for it. How shall it be, then, mon enfant[68]? Collar and elbow, or close-lock, or catch how you can?”
“To the devil with your tricks,” said John, opening and shutting his great red hands. “Stand forth, and let me clip thee.”
“Shalt clip me as best you can, then,” quoth the archer, moving out into the open space, and keeping a most wary eye upon his opponent. He had thrown off his green jerkin, and his chest was covered only by a pink silk jupon[69], or undershirt, cut low in the neck and sleeveless. Hordle John was stripped from his waist upwards, and his huge body, with his great muscles swelling out like the gnarled roots of an oak, towered high above the soldier. The other, however, though near a foot shorter, was a man of great strength; and there was a gloss upon his white skin which was wanting in the heavier limbs of the renegade monk. He was quick on his feet, too, and skilled at the game; so that it was clear, from the poise of head and shine of eye, that he counted the chances to be in his favour. It would have been hard that night, through the whole length of England, to set up a finer pair in face of each other.
Big John stood waiting in the centre with a sullen, menacing eye, and his red hair in a bristle, while the archer paced lightly and swiftly to the right and the left with crooked knee and hands advanced. Then, with a sudden dash, so swift and fierce that the eye could scarce follow it, he flew in upon his man and locked his leg round him. It was a grip that, between men of equal strength, would mean a fall; but Hordle John tore him off from him as he might a rat, and hurled him across the room, so that his head cracked up against the wooden wall.
“Ma foi![70]” cried the bowman, passing his fingers through his curls, “you were not far from the feather-bed then, mon gar[71]. A little more, and this good hostel would have a new window.”
Nothing daunted, he approached his man once more; but this time with more caution than before. With a quick feint he threw the other off his guard, and then, bounding upon him, threw his legs round his waist and his arms round his bull-neck, in the hope of bearing him to the ground with the sudden shock. With a bellow of rage, Hordle John squeezed him limp in his huge arms; and then, picking him up, cast him down upon the floor with a force which might well have splintered a bone or two, had not the archer with the most perfect coolness clung to the other’s forearms to break his fall. As it was, he dropped upon his feet and kept his balance, though it sent a jar through his frame which set every joint a-creaking. He bounded back from his perilous foeman; but the other, heated by the bout, rushed madly after him, and so gave the practised wrestler the very vantage for which he had planned. As big John flung himself upon him, the archer ducked under the great red hands that clutched for him, and, catching his man round the thighs, hurled him over his shoulder – helped as much by his own mad rush as by the trained strength of the heave. To Alleyne’s eye, it was as if John had taken unto himself wings and flown. As he hurtled through the air, with giant limbs revolving, the lad’s heart was in his mouth[72]; for surely no man ever yet had such a fall and came scathless out of it. In truth, hardy as the man was, his neck had been assuredly broken had he not pitched head first on the very midriff of the drunken artist, who was slumbering so peacefully in the corner, all unaware of these stirring doings. The luckless limner, thus suddenly brought out from his dreams, sat up with a piercing yell, while Hordle John bounded back into the circle almost as rapidly as he had left it.
“One more fall, by all the saints!” he cried, throwing out his arms.
“Not I,” quoth the archer, pulling on his clothes. “I have come well out of the business. I would sooner wrestle with the great bear of Navarre.”
“It was a trick,” cried John.
“Aye was it. By my ten finger-bones! it is a trick that will add a proper man to the ranks of the Company.”
“Oh, for that,” said the other, “I count it not a fly; for I had promised myself a good hour ago that I should go with thee, since the life seems to be a goodly and proper one. Yet I would fain have had the feather-bed.”
“I doubt it not, mon ami,” quoth the archer, going back to his tankard. “Here is to thee, lad, and may we be good comrades to each other! But holà! what is it that ails our friend of the wrathful face?”
The unfortunate limner had been sitting up, rubbing himself ruefully and staring about with a vacant gaze, which showed that he knew neither where he was nor what had occurred to him. Suddenly, however, a flash of intelligence had come over his sodden features, and he rose and staggered for the door. “,Ware the ale!” he said in a hoarse whisper, shaking a warning finger at the company. “Oh, holy Virgin,,ware the ale!” and clapping his hands to his injury, he flitted off into the darkness, amid a shout of laughter, in which the vanquished joined as merrily as the victor. The remaining forester and the two labourers were also ready for the road, and the rest of the company turned to the blankets which Dame Eliza and the maid had laid out for them upon the floor. Alleyne, weary with the unwonted excitements of the day, was soon in a deep slumber, broken only by fleeting visions of twittering legs, cursing beggars, black robbers, and the many strange folk whom he had met at the “Pied Merlin.”
Chapter VII
How the Three Comrades Journeyed through the Woodlands
At early dawn the country inn was all alive, for it was rare indeed that an hour of daylight would be wasted at a time when lighting was so scarce and dear. Indeed, early as it was when Dame Eliza began to stir, it seemed that others could be earlier still, for the door was ajar and the learned student of Cambridge had taken himself