Читать книгу The House of Walderne - A. D. Crake - Страница 11

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The watcher on the walls of Walderne Castle sees the sun sink beneath the distant downs, flooding Mount Caburn and his kindred giants with crimson light. In the great hall supper is preparing. See them all trooping in--retainers, fighting men, serving men, all taking their places at the boards placed at right angles to the high table, where the seats of Sir Nicholas de Harengod and his lady are to be seen.

He enters: a bluff stern warrior, in his undress, that is, without his panoply of armour and arms, in the long flowing robe affected by his Norman kindred at the festal board. She, with the comely robe which had superseded the gunna or gown, and the couvrechef (whence our word kerchief) on the head.

The chaplain, who served the little chapel within the castle, says grace, and the company fall upon the food with little ceremony. We have so often described their manners, or rather absence of manners, that we will not repeat how the joints were carved in the absence of forks, nor how necessary the finger glasses were after meals, although they only graced the higher board.

Wine, hippocras, mead, ale--there was plenty to eat and drink, and when the hunger was satisfied a palmer or pilgrim, who had but recently arrived from the Holy Land, sang a touching ballad about his adventures and sufferings in that Holy Land: