"You heard what he said himself," replied Sir Charles Weinants. "Our business is to go slowly on, and wait for him at Hinckley, if he does not overtake us by the way."
So was it in the end determined, and the party proceeded at a foot pace in the direction which they had before been taking. Mile after mile they rode on without being overtaken by their companion, every now and then pausing for a minute or two, to listen for his horse's feet, and then resuming their progress, till at length they arrived at Hinckley. They entered the inn yard, just at the moment that the carriers from Ashby de la Zouche to Northampton usually presented themselves with their packhorses; and they instantly had out landlord and ostlers, and all the retinue of the inn, with lanterns in abundance.
"Stay!" said Sir William Arden, as the attendants were hurrying to dismount, and lead their lords' horses to the stables. "Please Heaven, we will see who it is that is wanting."
"No need of that," exclaimed Sir Charles Weinants. "We shall learn soon enough, no doubt."
But the good knight, who was a steady campaigner, and one of the best soldiers of his day, adhered tenaciously to his purpose, ordered the gates of the inn-yard to be closed, and the doors of the house and of the stables to be shut and locked. He next insisted that the servants should draw up in separate bodies, the attendants of each master in a distinct line, and then made the ostlers carry their lanterns along the face of each.
"One of your men is wanting, Sir Charles Weinants," he said at length. "It must have been he who rode away, and left his company in the forest."
"More fool, or more knave he," replied Sir Charles Weinants, coolly. "He shall be punished for his pains by losing his wages. But, if I am not mistaken, there is another wanting too. Where is Lord Chartley's Moor? I have not seen him for some time, and do not perceive him now."
"He staid behind in the wood, Sir Charles," replied one of the servants, "to look after the noble lord. He said--let go who would, he would stay there."
"Perhaps my man staid for the same purpose?" said Sir Charles Weinants.
"No, sir," answered another of the servants, attached to Sir William Arden. "He left us some minutes before Lord Chartley, while we were still riding on through the forest."
"Well, gentlemen, I shall remain here till my friend comes," said Arden, in a marked tone; "for I do not altogether like this affair."
"And I shall stay, because I have had riding enough for one day; and the inn looks comfortable," said Sir Edward Hungerford.
"I shall ride on, as soon as my horses have been fed and watered," rejoined Sir Charles Weinants, in a cold resolute tone; "because I have business of importance which calls me to Leicester."
His determination did not seem very pleasant to Sir William Arden, who looked at him steadily for a moment, from under his bent brows, and then walked once or twice up and down the court, without ordering the doors of the stables to be opened.
Weinants, however, took that task upon himself. His horses received their food and devoured it eagerly; and then, just as the carriers were arriving, Sir Charles Weinants rode out of the court yard, bidding his companions adieu in the most perfectly civil and courteous terms.
Sir William Arden suffered him to depart, but most unwillingly it must be confessed, and, when he was gone, turned to Sir Edward Hungerford, saying: "I should like to skin him alive, the cold-blooded double dealer. It is very strange, what can have become of Lord Chartley."
"Strange!" said Sir Edward Hungerford, in a tone of affected surprise; "why, he has gone to say a few more words to that pretty girl at the abbey, to be sure. I should not wonder to see him arrive in half an hour, with the dear little thing on a pillion behind him."
"Pshaw!" said Arden. "You are a fool;" and he turned into the inn.
CHAPTER VII.
It was a dark night; and the appearance of the cottage or hut was, in the inside at least, gloomy enough. The large wooden boards, which shut out wind and storm, covered the apertures that served for windows; and neither lamp nor taper, nor even a common resin candle, gave light within. Yet it was only a sort of half darkness that reigned in the first chamber, as one entered from the forest; for a large fire was burning on the hearth, and a log weighing some hundredweight had just been put on. The dry unlopped shoots, and withered leaves which still hung around the trunk of the decayed tree, had caught fire first, and the flame they produced went flashing round the walls with a sort of fitful glare, displaying all that they contained.
The room was a large one, larger indeed than many, in buildings with far greater pretensions; for the chief woodman had upon particular occasions to assemble a great number of his foresters under that roof. Whole deer were often brought in to be broken and flayed, as the terms were, and prepared for cooking, before they were sent down to the more delicate hands of the abbey. Besides, the woodman's house was usually in those days a place of general hospitality; and, indeed, the good ladies of the abbey always passed right willingly the charges which he sometimes had to make for the entertainment of strangers and wayfarers on their lands.
As compared with a poor man's cottage of the present day, that of the woodman was a large but very wretched abode; but as compared with the huts of the ordinary peasantry of the time, it was a splendid mansion. The walls were formed of large beams of wood, crossing and supporting each other in various strange directions, forming a sort of pattern or figure inside and out, not unpleasant to look upon. The interstices were filled up with mud, mingled with small gravel stones and thick loam; and the floor was of mud, well battened down and hardened, though, in spite of all care, it presented various inequalities to the foot. Ceiling, as may well be supposed, the chamber had none. Large, heavy, roughly hewn rafters appeared above, with the inside of the thatch visible between the beams. A partition wall, with a rude door in it, crossed the building at about one third of its length, but this wall was raised no higher than those which formed the enclosure, that is to say, about seven or at most eight feet; and thus, though the lower part of the building was divided into several chambers, a clear passage for air, or sound, or rats, or mice, existed immediately under the roof, from one end of the building to the other. The most solid or massive piece of architecture in the whole structure was the chimney, with its enormously wide hearth and projecting wings. These were all built of hewn stone, the same as that of which the abbey was composed; and before the cottage was raised around it--for the chimney was built first--the mass must have looked like an obelisk in the midst of the forest.
Although we have greatly abandoned that sort of building at present, and doubtless our houses are more warm and air-tight than those of that day; yet the plan of these large wooden frame-works, with the beams shown on the inside and the out, was not without its convenience. Thus nails and hooks, and shelves and cupboards, were easily fixed in, or against the walls, without any danger of knocking down the plaster, or injuring the painting. Indeed, I do not know what the woodman would have done without this convenience, for the whole walls, on three sides at least, were studded with hooks and pegs, from which were suspended all sorts of implements belonging to his craft, and a variety of other goods and chattels. There were axes, knives, saws, bills, wedges, mallets, hammers, picks; long bows, cross bows, sheaves of arrows, bags of quarrels, boar-spears, nets, and two or three pronged forks, some serrated at the edges like Neptune's trident, and evidently intended to bring up unwilling eels out of their native mud. Then again there were various garments, such as a woodman might be supposed to use, leathern coats, large boots, a cloth jerkin, apparently for days of ceremony, gloves made of the thickest parts of a buck's hide, and a cap almost shaped like a morion, of double-jacked leather, which would have required a sharp sword and strong arm to cut it through. But, besides this defensive piece of clothing, which was probably intended rather for the forest than the field, was the ordinary steel cap, back and breastplate of a feudal archer of the period; for each woodman was bound to serve the abbey