Chapter 9: The Other Side Of The Picture.
The young scion of the house of Herstmonceux led Martin a few steps down the lane opposite Saint Mary’s Church, until they came to the vaulted doorway of a house of some pretensions. Its walls were thick, its windows deep set and narrow. Dull in external appearance, it did not seem to be so within, for sounds of riotous mirth proceeded from many a window left open for admittance of air. The great door was shut, but a little wicket was on the latch, and Ralph de Monceux opened it, saying:
“Come and do me the honour of a short visit, and give me the latest news from dear old Sussex.”
“What place is this?” replied Martin.
“Beef Halt, so called because of the hecatombs of oxen we consume.”
Martin smiled.
“What is the real name?”
“It should be ‘Ape Hall,’ for here we ape men of learning, whereas little is done but drinking, dicing, and fighting. But you will find our neighbours in the next street have monopolised that title, with yet stronger claims.”
“But what do the outsiders call you?”
“Saint Dymas’ Halt, since we never pay our debts. But the world calls it Le Oriole {17} Hostel. A better name just now is ‘Liberty Hall,’ for we all do just as we like. There is no king in Israel.”
So speaking, he lifted the latch, and saluted a gigantic porter:
“Holloa, Magog! hast thou digested the Woodstock deer yet?”
“Not so loud, my young sir. We may be heard.” He paused, but put his hand knowingly to the neck just under the left ear.
“Pshaw, he that is born to die in his bed can never be hanged. Where is Spitfire?”
“Here,” said a sharp-speaking voice, coming from a precocious young monkey in a servitor’s dress.
“Get me a flagon of canary, and we will wash down the remains of the pasty.”
“But strangers are not admitted after curfew,” said the porter.
“And I must be getting to my lodgings,” said Martin.
“Tush, tush, didn’t you hear that this is Liberty Hall?
“Shut your mouth, Magog—here is something to stop it. This young warrior just knocked down a bos borealis, who strove to break my head. Shall I not offer him bread and salt in return?”
The porter offered no further opposition, for the speaker slipped a coin into his palm as he continued:
“Come this way, this is my den. Not that way, that is spelunca latronum, a den of robbers.”
“Holloa! here is Ralph de Monceux, and with a broken head, as usual.
“Where didst thou get that, Master Ralph, roaring Ralph?”
Such sounds came from the spelunca latronum.
“At the Quatre Voies, fighting for your honour against a drove of northern oxen.”
“And whom hast thou brought with thee to help thee mend it?”
“The fellow who knocked down the bos who gave it me, as deftly as any butcher.”
“Let us see him.”
“What name shall I give thee?” whispered Ralph.
“Martin.”
“Martin of—?”
“Martin from Kenilworth,” said our bashful hero, blushing.
“Thou didst say thou wert of Sussex?”
“So I am, but I was adopted into the earl’s household three years agone.”
“Then he is Northern,” said a listener.
“No, he came from Sussex.”
“Say where? no tricks upon gentlemen.”
“Michelham Priory.”
“Michelham Priory. Ah! an acolyte! Tapers, incense, and albs.”
“Acolyte be hanged. He does not fight like one at all events.”
“Come up into my den.
“Come, Hugh, Percy, Aylmer, Richard, Roger, and we will discuss the matter deftly over a flagon of canary with eke a flask or two of sack, in honour of our new acquaintance.”
“Nay,” said Martin, “now I have seen you safe home, I must go. It is past curfew. I am a stranger, and should be at my lodgings.”
“We will see thee safely home, and improve the occasion by cracking a few more bovine skulls if we meet them, the northern burring brutes. Their lingo sickens me, but here we are.”
So speaking, he opened the door of the vaulted chamber he called his “den.” It was sparingly furnished, and bore no likeness to the sort of smoking divan an undergrad of the tone of Ralph would affect now in Oxford. Plain stove, floor strewn with rushes, rude tapestry around the walls, with those uncouth faces and figures worked thereon which give antiquarians a low idea of the personal appearance of the people of the day, a solid table, upon which a bear might dance without breaking it, two or three stools, a carved cabinet, a rude hearth and chimney piece, a rough basin and ewer of red ware in deal setting, a pallet bed in a recess.
And the students, the undergraduates of the period, were worth studying. One had a black eye, another a plastered head, a third an arm in a sling, a fourth a broken nose. Martin stared at them in amazement.
“We had a tremendous fight here last night. The Northerners besieged us in our hostel. We made a sally and levelled a few of the burring brutes before the town guard came up and spoiled the fun. What a pity we can’t fight like gentlemen with swords and battle axes!”
“Why not, if you must fight at all?” said Martin, who had been taught at Kenilworth to regard fists and cudgels as the weapons of clowns.
“Because, young greenhorn,” said Hugh, “he who should bring a sword or other lethal weapon into the University would shortly be expelled by alma mater from her nursery, according to the statutes for that case made and provided.”
“But why do you come here, if you love fighting better than learning? There is plenty of fighting in the world.”
“Some come because they are made to come, others from a vocation for the church, like thyself perhaps, others from an inexplicable love of books; you should hear us when our professor Asinus Asinorum takes us in class.
“Amo, amas, amat, see me catch a rat. Rego, regis, regit, let me sweat a bit.”
“Tace, no more Latin till tomorrow. Here is a venison pasty from a Woodstock deer, smuggled into the town beneath a load of hay, under the very noses of the watch.”
“Who shot it?”
“Mad Hugh and I.”
“Where did you get the load of hay from?”
“Oh, a farmer’s boy was driving it into town. We knocked him down, then tied him to a tree. It didn’t hurt him much, and we left him a walnut for his supper. Then Hugh put on his smock and other ragtags, and hiding the deer under the hay, drove it straight to the door, and Magog, who loves the smell of venison, took it in, but we made him buy the bulk of the carcase.”
“How much did he give?”
“A rose noble, and a good pie out of the animal into the bargain.”
“And what did you do with the cart?”
“Hugh put on the smock again, and drove it outside the northern gate, past ‘Perilous Hall,’ then gave the horse a cut or two of the whip, and left it to find its way home to Woodstock if it could.”
“A good thing you are here with your necks only their natural length. The king’s forester would have hung you all three.”
“Only he couldn’t catch us. We have led him many a dance before now.”
When the reader considers that killing the king’s deer was a hanging matter in those days, he will not think these young Oxonians behind their modern successors in daring, or, as he may call it, foolhardiness.
Martin was hungry, the smell of the pasty was very appetising, and neither he nor any one else said any more until the pie had been divided upon six wooden platters, and all had eaten heartily, washing it down with repeated draughts from a huge silver flagon of canary, one of the heirlooms of Herstmonceux; and afterwards they cleansed their fingers, which they had used instead of forks, in a large central finger glass—nay, bowl of earthenware.
“More drink, I have a jorum of splendid sack in you cupboard,” cried their host when the flagon was empty.
“Now a song, every one must give a song.
“Hugh, you begin.”
I love to lurk in the gloom of the wood
Where the lithesome stags are roaming,
And to send a sly shaft just to tickle their ribs
Ere I smuggle them home in the gloaming.
“Just the case with this one we have been eating. But that measure is slow, let me give you one,” said Ralph.
Come, drink until you drop, my boys,
And if a headache follow,
Why, go to bed and sleep it off,
And drink again tomorrow.
Martin began to fear that the wine was suffocating his conscience in its fumes—and said:
“I must go now.”
“We will all go with you.”
“Magog won’t let us out.”
“Yes he will, we will say we are all going to Saint Frideswide’s shrine to say our prayers.”
“The dice before we go.”
“Throw against me,” said Hugh to our Martin.
“I cannot, I never played in my life.”
“Then the sooner you begin the better.
“Here, roaring Ralph, this innocent young acolyte says he has never touched the dice.”
“Then the sooner he begins the better.
“Come, stake a mark against me.”
“He hasn’t got one.”
Shame, false shame, conquered Martin’s repugnance. He threw one of his few coins down, and Ralph did the same.
“You throw first—six and four—ten. Here goes—I have only two threes, the marks are yours.”
“Nay, I don’t want them.”
“Take them and be hanged. D’ye think I can’t spare a mark?”
“Fighting, dicing, drinking,” and then came to Martin’s mind the words of Adam de Maresco, uttered that very morning, and now he determined to go at once at any cost, and turned to the door.
“Nay, we are all going to see thee safe home. The boves boreales may be grazing in the streets.”
“I hear them! Burr! burr! burr!”
Down the stairs they all staggered. Martin felt so overcome as he emerged into the air that he did not know at first how to walk straight, yet he had not drunk half so much as the rest.
“Ce n’est que le premier pas qui coute.”
But happily (to ease the mind of our readers we will say at once) he was not to take many steps on this road.
“Magog! Magog! open! open!”
“Not such a noise, you’ll wake the old governor above,” —alluding to the master of the hostel.
“He won’t wake, not he. It does not pay to see too much. He knows his own interests.”
“Past curfew,” growled Magog. “Can’t let any one out.”
“That only means he wants another coin.”
“Open, Magog, we are going to pray at Saint Frideswide’s shrine for thee.”
“We are going to get another deer for thee at Woodstock.”
“We are going by the king’s invitation to visit the palace, and see the ghost of fair Rosamond.”
“We are going to sup with the Franciscans—six split peas and a thimbleful of water to each man.”
Even the venal porter hesitated to let such a crew into the streets, but he gave way under the pressure of another coin. Cudgel in hand they went forth, and as they passed the hostel they called “Ape Hall” they sang aloud:
Come forth, ye apes, and scratch your polls,
Your learning is in question,
And while ye scratch, eat what ye catch,
To quicken your digestion.
Two or three “apes” looked out of the window much disgusted, as well they might be, and were driven back by a shower of stones. Onward—shouting, roaring, singing, but they met no one. All the world was in bed. The moon alone looked down upon them as she waded through the clouds, casting brilliant light here, leaving black shadows there.
All at once a light, the light of a torch, turned the corner. The tinkling of a small bell was heard. It was close upon them. A priest bore the last Sacrament to the dying—the Viaticum, or Holy Communion, so called when given in the hour of death.
“Down,” cried Ralph, and they all knelt as it passed, for such was the universal habit. Even vicious sinners thought they atoned for their vice by their ready compliance with the forms of the Church. Many a man in that day would have thought it a less sin to cut a throat than to omit such an act of devotion.
But Martin recognised the priest. It was Adam de Maresco in his gray Franciscan robes, and he thought the father recognised him. He turned crimson with shame at being found in such company.
At last they reached home, and sick at heart he knocked at the door. It was long before he was admitted, and then not without sharp words of reproof, at which his companions laughed, as they turned and went back to Le Oriole.
Martin bathed his head in water to drive away the racking headache. Fire seemed coursing through his veins as he lay down on the hard pallet of straw in his little cell.
He was awoke by a hideous purring; there, as he thought, upon his cast-off garments, sat the enemy of mankind: he had drawn the mark gained at the dice out of the gypsire, and was feasting on it with his eyes, ever and anon licking it with great gusto, and meanwhile purr, purr, purring like a huge cat.
Martin, now awake, dashed from his couch—no fiend was there—he tore his gypsire open, took out the coin, opened his casement, and threw it like an accursed thing into the street. Then he got in bed again and sobbed like a child.