Cloister and the Hearth — Chapter 24, Part 2
At peep of day Gerard rose, flung the feather bed upon his snoring companion, and went in search of milk and air.
A cheerful voice hailed him in French: “What ho!
you are up with the sun, comrade.
” “He rises betimes that lies in a dog's lair,” answered Gerard crossly.
“Courage, l'ami!
le diable est mort,” was the instant reply.
The soldier then told him his name was Denys, and he was passing from Flushing in Zealand to the Duke's French dominions; a change the more agreeable to him, as he should revisit his native place, and a host of pretty girls who had wept at his departure, and should hear French spoken again.
“And who are you, and whither bound?
” “My name is Gerard, and I am going to Rome,” said the more reserved Hollander, and in a way that invited no further confidences.
“All the better; we will go together as far as Burgundy.
” “That is not my road.
” “All roads take to Rome.
” “Ay, but the shortest road thither is my way.
” “Well, then, it is I who must go out of my way a step for the sake of good company, for thy face likes me, and thou speakest French, or nearly.
” “There go two words to that bargain,” said Gerard coldly.
“I steer by proverbs, too.
They do put old heads on young men's shoulders.
'Bon loup mauvais compagnon, dit le brebis;' and a soldier, they say, is near akin to a wolf.
” “They lie,” said Denys; “besides, if he is, 'les loups ne se mangent pas entre eux.'
” “Aye but, sir soldier, I am not a wolf; and thou knowest, a bien petite occasion se saisit le loup du mouton.'
” “Let us drop wolves and sheep, being men; my meaning is, that a good soldier never pillages-a comrade.
Come, young man, too much suspicion becomes not your years.
They who travel should learn to read faces;
methinks you might see lealty in mine sith I have seen it in yourn.
Is it yon fat purse at your girdle you fear for?
” (Gerard turned pale.
) “Look hither!
” and he undid his belt, and poured out of it a double handful of gold pieces, then returned them to their hiding-place.
“There is a hostage for you,” said he; “carry you that, and let us be comrades,” and handed him his belt, gold and all.
Gerard stared.
“If I am over prudent, you have not enow.
” But he flushed and looked pleased at the other's trust in him.
“Bah!
I can read faces; and so must you, or you'll never take your four bones safe to Rome.
” “Soldier, you would find me a dull companion, for my heart is very heavy,” said Gerard, yielding.
“I'll cheer you, mon gars.
” “I think you would,” said Gerard sweetly; “and sore need have I of a kindly voice in mine ear this day.
” “Oh!
no soul is sad alongside me.
I lift up their poor little hearts with my consigne: 'Courage, tout le monde, le diable est mort.'
Ha!
ha!
” “So be it, then,” said Gerard.
“But take back your belt, for I could never trust by halves.
We will go together as far as Rhine, and God go with us both!
” “Amen!
” said Denys, and lifted his cap.
“En avant!
” The pair trudged manfully on, and Denys enlivened the weary way.
He chattered about battles and sieges, and things which were new to Gerard;
and he was one of those who make little incidents wherever they go.
He passed nobody without addressing them.
“They don't understand it, but it wakes them up,” said he.
But whenever they fell in with a monk or priest.
He pulled a long face, and sought the reverend father's blessing, and fearlessly poured out on him floods of German words in such order as not to produce a single German sentence--He doffed his cap to every woman, high or low, he caught sight of, and with eagle eye discerned her best feature, and complimented her on it in his native tongue, well adapted to such matters; and at each carrion crow or magpie, down came his crossbow, and he would go a furlong off the road to circumvent it; and indeed he did shoot one old crow with laudable neatness and despatch, and carried it to the nearest hen-roost, and there slipped in and set it upon a nest.
“The good-wife will say, 'Alack, here is Beelzebub ahatching of my eggs.'
” “No, you forget he is dead,” objected Gerard.
“So he is, so he is.
But she doesn't know that, not having the luck to be acquainted with me, who carry the good news from city to city, uplifting men's hearts.
” Such was Denys in time of peace.
Our travellers towards nightfall reached a village; it was a very small one, but contained a place of entertainment.
They searched for it, and found a small house with barn and stables.
In the former was the everlasting stove, and the clothes drying round it on lines, and a traveller or two sitting morose.
Gerard asked for supper.
“Supper?
We have no time to cook for travellers; we only provide lodging, good lodging for man and beast.
You can have some beer.
” “Madman, who, born in Holland, sought other lands!
” snorted Gerard in Dutch.
The landlady started.
“What gibberish is that?
” asked she, and crossed herself with looks of superstitious alarm.
“You can buy what you like in the village, and cook it in our oven; but, prithee, mutter no charms nor sorceries here, good man; don't ye now, it do make my flesh creep so.
” They scoured the village for food, and ended by supping on roasted eggs and brown bread.
At a very early hour their chambermaid came for them.
It was a rosy-cheeked old fellow with a lanthorn.
They followed him.
He led them across a dirty farmyard, where they had much ado to pick their steps, and brought them into a cow-house.
There, on each side of every cow, was laid a little clean straw, and a tied bundle of ditto for a pillow.
The old man looked down on this his work with paternal pride.
Not so Gerard.
“What, do you set Christian men to lie among cattle?
” “Well, it is hard upon the poor beasts.
They have scarce room to turn.
” “Oh!
what, it is not hard on us, then?
” “Where is the hardship?
I have lain among them all my life.
Look at me!
I am fourscore, and never had a headache in all my born days--all along of lying among the kye.
Bless your silly head, kine's breath is ten times sweeter to drink nor Christians'.
You try it!
” and he slammed the bedroom door.
“Denys, where are you?
” whined Gerard.
“Here, on her other side.
” “What are you doing?
” “I know not; but as near as I can guess, I think I must be going to sleep.
What are you at?
“I am saying my prayers.
” “Forget me not in them!
” “Is it likely?
Denys, I shall soon have done: do not go to sleep, I want to talk.
“Despatch then!
for I feel--augh like floating-in the sky on a warm cloud.
” “Denys!
” “Augh!
eh!
hallo!
is it time to get up?
” “Alack, no. There, I hurried my orisons to talk; and look at you, going to sleep!
We shall be starved before morning, having no coverlets.
” “Well, you know what to do.
” “Not I, in sooth.
” “Cuddle the cow.
” “Thank you.
” “Burrow in the straw, then.
You must be very new to the world, to grumble at this.
How would you bear to lie on the field of battle on a frosty night, as I did t'other day, stark naked, with nothing to keep me warm but the carcass of a fellow I had been and helped kill?
” “Horrible!
horrible!
Tell me all about it!
Oh, but this is sweet.
” “Well, we had a little battle in Brabant, and won a little victory, but it cost us dear; several arbalestriers turned their toes up, and I among them.
” “Killed, Denys?
come now!
” “Dead as mutton.
Stuck full of pike-holes till the blood ran out of me, like the good wine of Macon from the trodden grapes.
It is right bounteous in me to pour the tale in minstrel phrase, for--augh--I am sleepy.
Augh--now where was I?
” “Left dead on the field of battle, bleeding like a pig; that is to say, like grapes, or something; go on, prithee go on, 'tis a sin to sleep in the midst of a good story.
” “Granted.
Well, some of those vagabonds, that strip the dead soldier on the field of glory, came and took every rag off me; they wrought me no further ill, because there was no need.
” “No; you were dead.
” “C'est convenu.
This must have been at sundown; and with the night came a shrewd frost that barkened the blood on my wounds, and stopped all the rivulets that were running from my heart, and about midnight I awoke as from a trance.'
“And thought you were in heaven?
” asked Gerard eagerly, being a youth inoculated with monkish tales.
“Too frost-bitten for that, mon gars; besides, I heard the wounded groaning on all sides, so I knew I was in the old place.
I saw I could not live the night through without cover.
I groped about shivering and shivering; at last one did suddenly leave groaning.
'You are sped,' said I, so made up to him, and true enough he was dead, but warm, you know.
I took my lord in my arms, but was too weak to carry him, so rolled with him into a ditch hard by; and there my comrades found me in the morning properly stung with nettles, and hugging a dead Fleming for the bare life.
” Gerard shuddered.
“And this is war; this is the chosen theme of poets and troubadours, and Reden Ryckers.
Truly was it said by the men of old, dulce bellum inexpertis.
” “Tu dis?
” “I say-oh, what stout hearts some men have!
” “N'est-ce pas, p'tit?
So after that sort--thing--this sort thing is heaven.
Soft--warm--good company, comradancow--cou'age--diable--m-ornk!
” And the glib tongue was still for some hours.
In the morning Gerard was wakened by a liquid hitting his eye, and it was Denys employing the cow's udder as a squirt.
“Oh, fie!
” cried Gerard, “to waste the good milk;” and he took a horn out of his wallet.
“Fill this!
but indeed I see not what right we have to meddle with her milk at all.
” “Make your mind easy!
Last night la camarade was not nice; but what then, true friendship dispenses with ceremony.
To-day we make as free with her.
” “Why, what did she do, poor thing?
” “Ate my pillow.
” “Ha!
ha!
” “On waking I had to hunt for my head, and found it down in the stable gutter.
She ate our pillow from us, we drink our pillow from her.
A
votre sante, madame; et sans rancune;” and the dog drank her milk to her own health.
“The ancient was right though,” said Gerard.
“Never have I risen so refreshed since I left my native land.
Henceforth let us shun great towns, and still lie in a convent or a cow-house; for I'd liever sleep on fresh straw, than on linen well washed six months agone; and the breath of kine it is sweeter than that of Christians, let alone the garlic, which men and women folk affect, but cowen abhor from, and so do I, St. Bavon be my witness!
” The soldier eyed him from head to foot: “Now but for that little tuft on your chin I should take you for a girl; and by the finger-nails of St. Luke, no ill-favoured one neither.
” These three towns proved types and repeated themselves with slight variations for many a weary league; but even when he could get neither a convent nor a cow-house, Gerard learned in time to steel himself to the inevitable, and to emulate his comrade, whom he looked on as almost superhuman for hardihood of body and spirit.
There was, however, a balance to all this veneration.
Denys, like his predecessor Achilles, had his weak part, his very weak part, thought Gerard.
His foible was “woman.
” Whatever he was saying or doing, he stopped short at sight of a farthingale, and his whole soul became occupied with that garment and its inmate till they had disappeared; and sometimes for a good while after.
He often put Gerard to the blush by talking his amazing German to such females as he caught standing or sitting indoors or out, at which they stared; and when he met a peasant girl on the road, he took off his cap to her and saluted her as if she was a queen; the invariable effect of which was, that she suddenly drew herself up quite stiff like a soldier on parade, and wore a forbidding countenance.
“They drive me to despair,” said Denys.
“Is that a just return to a civil bonnetade?
They are large, they are fair, but stupid as swans.
” “What breeding can you expect from women that wear no hose?
” inquired Gerard; “and some of them no shoon?
They seem to me reserved and modest, as becomes their sex, and sober, whereas the men are little better than beer-barrels.
Would you have them brazen as well as hoseless?
” “A little affability adorns even beauty,” sighed Denys.
“Then let these alone, sith they are not to your taste,” retorted Gerard.
“What, is there no sweet face in Burgundy that would pale to see you so wrapped up in strange women?
” “Half-a-dozen that would cry their eyes out.
” “Well then!
” “But it is a long way to Burgundy.
” “Ay, to the foot, but not to the heart.
I am there, sleeping and waking, and almost every minute of the day.
” “In Burgundy?
Why, I thought you had never--” “In Burgundy?
” cried Gerard contemptuously.
“No, in sweet Sevenbergen.
Ah!
well-a-day!
well-a-day!
” Many such dialogues as this passed between the pair on the long and weary road, and neither could change the other.
One day about noon they reached a town of some pretensions, and Gerard was glad, for he wanted to buy a pair of shoes; his own were quite worn out.
They soon found a shop that displayed a goodly array, and made up to it, and would have entered it, but the shopkeeper sat on the doorstep taking a nap, and was so fat as to block up the narrow doorway; the very light could hardly struggle past his “too, too solid flesh,” much less a carnal customer.
My fair readers, accustomed, when they go shopping, to be met half way with nods, and becks, and wreathed smiles, and waved into a seat, while almost at the same instant an eager shopman flings himself half across the counter in a semi-circle to learn their commands, can best appreciate this mediaeval Teuton, who kept a shop as a dog keeps a kennel, and sat at the exclusion of custom snoring like a pig.
Denys and Gerard stood and contemplated this curiosity; emblem, permit me to remark, of the lets and hindrances to commerce that characterized his epoch.
“Jump over him!
” “The door is too low.
” “March through him!
” “The man is too thick.
” “What is the coil?
” inquired a mumbling voice from the interior;
apprentice with his mouth full.
“We want to get into your shop?
” “What for, in Heaven's name??!!!
” “Shoon, lazy bones!
” The ire of the apprentice began to rise at such an explanation.
“And could ye find no hour out of all the twelve to come pestering us for shoon, but the one little, little hour my master takes his nap, and I sit down to my dinner, when all the rest of the world is full long ago?
” Denys heard, but could not follow the sense.
“Waste no more time talking their German gibberish,” said he; “take out thy knife and tickle his fat ribs.
” “That I will not,” said Gerard.
“Then here goes; I'll prong him with this.
” Gerard seized the mad fellow's arm in dismay, for he had been long enough in the country to guess that the whole town would take part in any brawl with the native against a stranger.
But Denys twisted away from him, and the cross-bow bolt in his hand was actually on the road to the sleeper's ribs; but at that very moment two females crossed the road towards him; he saw the blissful vision, and instantly forgot what he was about, and awaited their approach with unreasonable joy.
Though companions, they were not equals, except in attractiveness to a Burgundian crossbow man; for one was very tall, the other short, and by one of those anomalies which society, however primitive, speedily establishes, the long one held up the little one's tail.
The tall one wore a plain linen coif on her head, a little grogram cloak over her shoulders, a grey kirtle, and a short farthingale or petticoat of bright red cloth, and feet and legs quite bare, though her arms were veiled in tight linen sleeves.
The other a kirtle broadly trimmed with fur, her arms in double sleeves, whereof the inner of yellow satin clung to the skin; the outer, all befurred, were open at the inside of the elbow, and so the arm passed through and left them dangling.
Velvet head-dress, huge purse at girdle, gorgeous train, bare legs.
And thus they came on, the citizen's wife strutting, and the maid gliding after, holding her mistress's train devoutly in both hands, and bending and winding her lithe body prettily enough to do it.
Imagine (if not pressed for time) a bantam, with a guineahen stepping obsequious at its stately heel.
This pageant made straight for the shoemaker's shop.
Denys louted low;
the worshipful lady nodded graciously, but rapidly, having business on hand, or rather on foot; for in a moment she poked the point of her little shoe into the sleeper, and worked it round in him like a gimlet, till with a long snarl he woke.
The incarnate shutter rising and grumbling vaguely, the lady swept in and deigned him no further notice.
He retreated to his neighbour's shop, the tailor's, and sitting on the step, protected it from the impertinence of morning calls.
Neighbours should be neighbourly.
Denys and Gerard followed the dignity into the shop, where sat the apprentice at dinner; the maid stood outside with her insteps crossed, leaning against the wall, and tapping it with her nails.
“Those, yonder,” said the dignity briefly, pointing with an imperious little white hand to some yellow shoes gilded at the toe.
While the apprentice stood stock still neutralized by his dinner and his duty, Denys sprang at the shoes, and brought them to her; she smiled, and calmly seating herself, protruded her foot, shod, but hoseless, and scented.
Down went Denys on his knees, and drew off her shoe, and tried the new ones on the white skin devoutly.
Finding she had a willing victim, she abused the opportunity, tried first one pair, then another, then the first again, and so on, balancing and hesitating for about half an hour, to Gerard's disgust, and Denys's weak delight.
At last she was fitted, and handed two pair of yellow and one pair of red shoes out to her servant.
Then was heard a sigh.
It burst from the owner of the shop: he had risen from slumber, and was now hovering about, like a partridge near her brood in danger.
“There go all my coloured shoes,” said he, as they disappeared in the girl's apron.
The lady departed: Gerard fitted himself with a stout pair, asked the price, paid it without a word, and gave his old ones to a beggar in the street, who blessed him in the marketplace, and threw them furiously down a well in the suburbs.
The comrades left the shop, and in it two melancholy men, that looked, and even talked, as if they had been robbed wholesale.
“My shoon are sore worn,” said Denys, grinding his teeth; “but I'll go barefoot till I reach France, ere I'll leave my money with such churls as these.
” The Dutchman replied calmly, “They seem indifferent well sewn.
” As they drew near the Rhine, they passed through forest after forest, and now for the first time ugly words sounded in travellers' mouths, seated around stoves.
“Thieves!
” “black gangs!
” “cut-throats!
” etc. The very rustics were said to have a custom hereabouts of murdering the unwary traveller in these gloomy woods, whose dark and devious winding enabled those who were familiar with them to do deeds of rapine and blood undetected, or if detected, easily to baffle pursuit.
Certain it was, that every clown they met carried, whether for offence or defence, a most formidable weapon; a light axe, with a short pike at the head, and a long slender handle of ash or yew, well seasoned.
These the natives could all throw with singular precision, so as to make the point strike an object at several yard's distance, or could slay a bullock at hand with a stroke of the blade.
Gerard bought one and practised with it.
Denys quietly filed and ground his bolt sharp, whistling the whilst; and when they entered a gloomy wood, he would unsling his crossbow and carry it ready for action; but not so much like a traveller fearing an attack, as a sportsman watchful not to miss a snap shot.
One day, being in a forest a few leagues from Dusseldorf, as Gerard was walking like one in a dream, thinking of Margaret, and scarce seeing the road he trode, his companion laid a hand on his shoulder, and strung his crossbow with glittering eye.
“Hush!
” said he, in a low whisper that startled Gerard more than thunder.
Gerard grasped his axe tight, and shook a little: he heard a rustling in the wood hard by, and at the same moment Denys sprang into the wood, and his crossbow went to his shoulder, even as he jumped.
Twang!
went the metal string; and after an instant's suspense he roared, “Run forward, guard the road, he is hit!
he is hit!
” Gerard darted forward, and as he ran a young bear burst out of the wood right upon him; finding itself intercepted, it went upon its hind legs with a snarl, and though not half grown, opened formidable jaws and long claws.
Gerard, in a fury of excitement and agitation, flung himself on it, and delivered a tremendous blow on its nose with his axe, and the creature staggered; another, and it lay grovelling, with Gerard hacking it.
“Hallo!
stop!
you are mad to spoil the meat.
” “I took it for a robber,” said Gerard, panting.
“I mean, I had made ready for a robber, so I could not hold my hand.
” “Ay, these chattering travellers have stuffed your head full of thieves and assassins; they have not got a real live robber in their whole nation.
Nay, I'll carry the beast; bear thou my crossbow.
” “We will carry it by turns, then,” said Gerard, “for 'tis a heavy load: poor thing, how its blood drips.
Why did we slay it?
” “For supper and the reward the baillie of the next town shall give us.
” “And for that it must die, when it had but just begun to live; and perchance it hath a mother that will miss it sore this night, and loves it as ours love us; more than mine does me.
” “What, know you not that his mother was caught in a pitfall last month, and her skin is now at the tanner's?
and his father was stuck full of cloth-yard shafts t'other day, and died like Julius Caesar, with his hands folded on his bosom, and a dead dog in each of them?
” But Gerard would not view it jestingly.
“Why, then,” said he, “we have killed one of God's creatures that was all alone in the world-as I am this day, in this strange land.
” “You young milksop,” roared Denys, “these things must not be looked at so, or not another bow would be drawn nor quarrel fly in forest nor battlefield.
Why, one of your kidney consorting with a troop of pikemen should turn them to a row of milk-pails; it is ended, to Rome thou goest not alone, for never wouldst thou reach the Alps in a whole skin.
I take thee to Remiremont, my native place, and there I marry thee to my young sister, she is blooming as a peach.
Thou shakest thy head?
ah!
I forgot;
thou lovest elsewhere, and art a one woman man, a creature to me scarce conceivable.
Well then I shall find thee, not a wife, nor a leman, but a friend; some honest Burgundian who shall go with thee as far as Lyons;
and much I doubt that honest fellow will be myself, into whose liquor thou has dropped sundry powders to make me love thee; for erst I endured not doves in doublet and hose.
From Lyons, I say, I can trust thee by ship to Italy, which being by all accounts the very stronghold of milksops, thou wilt there be safe: they will hear thy words, and make thee their duke in a twinkling.
” Gerard sighed.
“In sooth I love not to think of this Dusseldorf, where we are to part company, good friend.
” They walked silently, each thinking of the separation at hand; the thought checked trifling conversation, and at these moments it is a relief to do something, however insignificant.
Gerard asked Denys to lend him a bolt.
“I have often shot with a long bow, but never with one of these!
” “Draw thy knife and cut this one out of the cub,” said Denys slily.
“Nay, Day, I want a clean one.
” Denys gave him three out of his quiver.
Gerard strung the bow, and levelled it at a bough that had fallen into the road at some distance.
