Читать книгу The Black Rose - Thomas B. Costain - Страница 8

Night had settled down blackly over the dripping eaves of Oxford when he left the church. He turned and ran in haste through the maze of crooked lanes lying back of St. Martin’s, an instinctive fear lending speed to his heels.

The strangest thing about life at the university was that the clerkly body professed no fear of the night. At home it was far different. They lived in the shadow of many fears at Gurnie, but the one which weighed most on all minds was the certainty that the hours of darkness belonged to the devil. Walter had often watched with tightening breath the descent of the sun behind the jagged frame of oak at Algitha Scaur, half expecting to see the tips of Satan’s horns above the horizon. The plowfolk came running from the fields when daylight was gone as though a coven of witches screeched at their heels. Good Father Clement pulled lustily on the bells when a storm threatened with the passing of day; nay, he was often seen issuing forth with holy water to exorcise the demons which came with the blackness and on the scud of the wind. No one breathed easily until the shutters at Gurnie were bolted to the mullions and Agnes Malkinsmaiden had brought in supper and the ale which put new courage in unsteady stomachs.

Walter knew no sound more welcome than the crow of the first cock in the morning. The old house revived to confidence then. One could hear whistling and snatches of song as the servants and the plowfolk tied up their points and sloshed cold water over their heads at the well near the kitchen midden. God’s turn had come again and all was well in the world.

But here at Oxford life took on a stronger beat with the fall of darkness. The students issued forth then with surcotes gathered close around their waists to conceal the sharp blades they wore at their belts in place of ink-cases. They were filled with the prospect of adventure; a tryst with a tavern wench, perhaps, or a brush with the citizens of the town. There was zest in their voices as they shouted, “A clerk! A clerk!” to other groups passing in the narrow streets. Sometimes this deepened into a note of urgency when there was trouble with the watch; and then, at the rallying cry of “Surgite! Surgite!” the students came tumbling out of tavern and hospitium and dark garret to aid their hard-pressed brethren. The men of Oxford seemed to love the dark, but this was not because they had lost all their fear of the devil. They went to confession as apprehensive and shamefaced as the most nervous of sinners. Rather it was because the mantle of night made it easier for them to forget their youth and to strut like the bold rufflers they fancied themselves to be.

For two reasons Walter seldom went out with his fellows. The first was his desire to get on with his studies. He could hardly wait for the day when his knowledge of Latin and Greek, and the smattering of Arabic and Hebrew he was so painfully acquiring, could be put to practical use. Since the Crusades the eyes of men who needed to mend their fortunes had turned to the East. He wanted to hear the jingle of tower pounds in his pockets. He hoped a time would come when Engaine could no longer look at him with her green-blue eyes and say, “Toftman!” with so much scorn.

The second reason was his intense sensitivity on the score of his birth. His fellow clerks at Butterbump Hall (so called because they used a bittern for their house sign) had come to consider him a very prickly sort of fellow. He regretted his unpopularity but seemed unable to do anything about it. When cloaks were being donned for a nightly foray into the streets, he would want to say, “Wait for me, my masters of arts; I’m not a bad fellow, after all.” But he would stifle the impulse, saying to himself: “They don’t want you. Surely they’ve made that clear enough. Where’s your pride, you fool!”

His love of Oxford was almost fanatical; but he was not happy there.

When he reached the hospitium, he found that his long wait had cost him his supper, but his regret was tempered by the odor seeping through the screens at the entrance which told him that Giles had served fish again. In all probability it had not been fresh. Would any of the clerks smuggle battles (the term they used for food consumed after hours) to their room upstairs later in the evening? If they did, he reflected ruefully, they would not invite him to share.

He had intended to settle down with St. Anselm’s Monologium but the solar bedroom was filled with the sound of voices reading aloud. He wondered if he would dare say what was in his mind, that in France and all other really learned countries it was considered a lack of scholarship not to be able to read to yourself. Then he noticed that Ninian was reaching down his fur-lined hood from the wall. Ninian was privileged to wear this distinguishing mark of the nobility because his father was a warden on the Welsh border. Walter’s father was an earl, but he himself was compelled nevertheless to wear a plain hood.

Ninian stalked over to where Walter was standing. “Bastard,” he said, “I must have a talk with you, and I don’t want these louts to hear. Come out with me.”

Everything about him irked Walter: his assumption of superiority, his way of mumbling his words, the slackness of his lower jaw, and above all else his standing with Engaine.

“I’ve just come in and I’m wet now, as you must see. The candles will be snuffed in another hour, and I need every minute of the time.”

“I’ll let you have my quintus,” grumbled Ninian. “It’s a new one, and you’ll have to be damnably careful of it.” Then he frowned in his superior way. “Your manners will bear mending, Bastard.”

“My manners are my own. I am quite content with them.”

The warden’s son found it hard to accept this disregard of his wishes. He rubbed his jaw and continued to frown. “You make me as angry as a kibed heel. But, after all, you are of noble degree and that makes a difference. If you’ll come,” he added, in a more amiable tone, “I will speak to Giles and have him get us some battles.”

This put a different face on the matter. Walter realized that he was very hungry. “A cut of cold beef?” he asked.

Ninian nodded and clinked the coins in his purse. “Beef or mutton, whichever he can get. Perhaps I’ll pay for a nook of pastry as well.” He lowered his voice. “I want to talk to you about Engaine.”

Walter threw his own wet surcote into a corner and donned the proffered quintus. He had never possessed one of these new and highly fashionable cloaks, and he strutted unconsciously when the fur collar had been fastened at the neck.

“I sorely begrudge you your inches,” said Ninian, looking up at him enviously. “And why should you have both a Norman arch to your nose and that yellow hair? If I had some share of your looks, Engaine might think better of me.”

They began to descend the inside staircase (a matter of great pride with the inmates of Butterbump Hall, for most of the houses in Oxford had stairs on the outside), and Ninian proceeded to tell his troubles.

“I have to confess that I’m disturbed about something I have just heard. Engaine and I are first cousins, but it has always been understood in the two families that we would marry. Naturally I favor the match. She will come into all the holdings of Tressling, and then, of course, she is quite handsome and a gamesome little wench. I won’t be able to match her in lands, but I shall have the manors of Barlay from my mother’s side and a goodish stretch of timber on the border. I am not a beggar exactly. And now,” an aggrieved note had crept into his voice, “I hear her drunken old father has other plans. A fatter fish is dangling on the line. What would you do in my case, Bastard? You have a shrewd head on your shoulders even if you are such a cross-grained bandog, and of course you have no love for Tressling. I value your opinion. Would you go straight to the old wine sot and demand your rights?”

Walter felt a deeper concern over this unexpected revelation than the mincing Ninian. “Who is this other suitor?” he asked.

“I am not sure. They are being very sly about it at Tressling. But,” with an attempt at bluster, “I have my suspicions, and I have no intention of stepping aside.”

They had reached the front door when the agitated patter of Master Matthias Hornpepper’s feet sounded behind them. The principilator of the Hall was a tubby little man with a long sullen nose and a constant sense of grievance. His duties kept him in such a state of turmoil that he was seldom seen, no matter what the season or the time, without perspiration on his brow.

The principilator cleared his throat nervously. “Ah, hum! Good Master Ninian!” he called after them. “A word with you, young gentleman.”

Ninian muttered, “Now what does that greasy old jolthead want?” He faced about. “I am going out. I have no time to talk to you now, Master Hornpepper. You are a mangy nuisance, Master Hornpepper, and I think we must be getting ourselves a new principilator.”

Master Hornpepper said in a humble voice, “I have had a serious complaint about you.”

“What is wrong with this unreasonable knave?” demanded Ninian. “I pay him ten pence a week though I know he collects no more than eight from anyone else. Isn’t it enough that he robs me without making my head ring with his eternal complaints?”

“It is about—well, it is about a girl. And it comes from an esquire bedel of the university.”

It was apparent that Ninian was startled. A defensive gleam showed in his weak gray eyes.

“It appears,” said Master Hornpepper, “that you have been most imprudent, if I may make so bold as to comment on your conduct. The girl has been foolish enough to—ahem—to get herself with child.”

Ninian looked still more startled for a moment. Then a self-conscious smile spread over his long, sallow countenance. It was clear that he was pleased.

“By St. Frideswide, that is worth hearing!” he said. “My father will be proud of me. I have often heard him say a man is not a man until he has brought six bastards into the world.”

“It will be a scandal, a very great scandal!” protested the principilator. “Poor Thomas Tavener’s face was as white as wax when he spoke to me about it. He has always doted on his daughter, and he is quite broken over the shame you have brought her.”

“Shame?” exclaimed Ninian. “Don’t you see it is the best possible luck for her? There will be noble blood in her child. A settlement will be made, of course; my father will see to that. Enough to keep her, and the little bastard as well when he arrives.”

Walter was having the greatest difficulty in keeping his hands from his companion’s throat. Men used the word “bastard” as casually as “Good morrow” or “God rest you,” but he had never become reconciled to it. Every time it was applied to him, he would think of his mother’s pale face and the sorry circumstances under which she lived at Gurnie, and an inner rage would take possession of him.

They became aware at this point that they had an audience. A loud laugh sounded from the Squint in the oak screens, and the voice of Humphrey Armstraung from the west country said, “So, our highborn Ninian has been drabbing!” He appeared from behind the screens, a broad grin under the round hat he wore as a full bachelor of arts. Armstraung, generally known as the Utterly Masterful Hump, was the acknowledged leader of the Hall. Several others followed him, Rob Wynter from the Fens and Ludar Fitzberg from Ireland, among them.

The principilator clucked with dismay. “Young sirs, young sirs,” he cried. “I did not know we had witnesses! No whisper of this must get out. We must think of the good name of the Hall.”

“We’ll keep mum,” grumbled Armstraung. “Though, to my mind, it would add something to our good name if it got out.”

The others nodded their assent. Walter could tell, from the way they were looking at Ninian, that the prospective father had risen mightily in their regard.

“By St. Christopher!” cried the Utterly Masterful Hump, slapping him on the back approvingly. “Here he is, a hawk among the little dab-chicks, and none of us suspected it.”

“If it’s a boy, you can turn him over to the king,” suggested the Irishman, looking slyly at Walter. “That seems to be the right way with bastard sons, though some fathers prefer not to claim them.”

As a mark of their change of sentiment toward the erring Ninian, they all decided to go along, and there was a rush to find cloaks. The roke had dwindled when they issued forth, seven in all, and the only discomfort they felt was underfoot.

“Where to, my wag?” demanded Hump, slapping Ninian on the back a second time. “You have the right tonight to call the tune. And pay the piper, of course.”

Ninian was brimming over with gratification. “To Timothy-Two-Tunes!” he cried, recklessly. “Timothy will sing for us, and we’ll have a pinch of fennel in our ale.”

The tavern of Timothy-Two-Tunes was crowded when they arrived, mostly with university men of the more prosperous stripe. There were clerks from Peckwater’s Inn and St. Mary’s Entry and Leadenporch Hall and the Saracen’s Head. At first glance Walter thought they were all Artists and, therefore, devoted to the Trivium, which consisted of grammar, rhetoric, and logic as well as Latin. He finally saw one Legist, a moist sort of fellow whose tongue was wagging about pollgreat taxes and the other dull matters which would concern him when he became a full-fledged lawyer. A priest was seated in front of the fire with the skirt of his soutane tucked up over his knees. He could be set down for a chantry priest at a glance, being fat and unconcerned of mien. The chantry brethren had no duties but to say prayers for the souls of departed patrons.

“The heaven-beck is soaking up all the heat,” grumbled Hump. It was the habit of the moment at Oxford to affect irreverence. “There’s no decency about a back as broad as that. Think of all the good mutton and ale needed to keep such a carcass alive! Why isn’t he where he belongs, saying his aves for the poor soul who depends on him to escape from frying in purgatory?”

Ninian called to Timothy-Two-Tunes: “Landlord, ale for seven. And, mind you, a drop of fennel in each.”

Timothy, who was singing at the other end of the room, paid no attention. He pressed the wheel of his rote against the strings and went on with his song. It was a new melody and the words of the refrain had a curious catch to them:

“Away to Cathay.

Away! Away!”

His daughter Dervagilla came to wait on them instead. She was a dumpling-breasted trollop who kept herself free of unwelcome attentions by boasting so openly of her lustiness that no one dared make an advance. Settling her hands on her broad hips, she looked at Ninian scornfully and said: “Ale, is it, and fennel? Ye’ll be more polite, if ye please, or it’s a pinch of mugwort and not fennel ye’ll be getting.” Turning to the rest of them, she said in a whisper out of one corner of her mouth, “If I ever got him in bed with me, I would break his back, the milting little hinny!”

The Legist was prating now of young King Edward and what he would do when he returned from the Crusades. “We are going to have a real king at last. He’ll put fleas under the tails of the proud barons! Their power will be taken away from them, and we’ll have peace and order in the land again.”

Peace and order in the land, with the king’s power as absolute as when wicked John tried to set all rights at naught! The fellow was mad, Walter said to himself, to talk such nonsense.

“If there’s peace and order in the land, how will lawyers make a living?” he asked.

Hump Armstraung said to the Legist, “Pay no heed to the Bastard; he always has a bullbeggar riding his back.”

Walter made no answer. He got to his feet and walked to the other side of the room, where he found a seat on a wooden bench. He would have no part in such talk. The new ruler had all the kingly qualities of the Plantagenets, that much he acknowledged—the courage and the bitter pride as well as the tall frame, the kindling eye, and the golden hair. They were handsome men, the Plantagenet kings. But Edward had killed Simon de Montfort at Evesham, great Earl Simon who had fought for the rights of the people, and his father, Old King Harry, had taken away the lands of Gurnie. Edward the First would have no fealty from him!

He tried to catch Ninian’s eye in the hope that the latter would now join him for their talk. What was this ominous story he had heard about Engaine? A fatter fish dangling on the line! This could mean only that the lord of Tressling was planning an early marriage for his daughter and heiress.

He had never been much concerned over Ninian’s pretensions. But who was this more worthy suitor now in the offing? The thought of Engaine married was like a dagger thrust to the heart.

Ninian continued to snigger over his ale and never once looked in his direction. What was the matter with the fellow? Had he forgotten their reason for coming out?

The Legist finished his tiresome talk. The chantry priest hove around on his stool and winked at the company. “The uneasy soul of my deceased patron is skipping briskly,” he said. “I must get back to my devotions on his behalf. I live well enough on the gold he left, and so it behooves me to keep him from roasting too long.”

Walter sat up suddenly on the hard bench. A loud uproar had risen in the streets. Above the clamor of angry voices came the signal to which all clerks responded wherever they were:

“Surgite! Surgite!”

Walter found himself on his feet, his hand tugging with nervous haste at the knife in his belt. Armstraung sprang up with such violence that he upset the chantry priest, who rolled on the floor on his fat backsides, his legs waving in the air like those of an overturned bug. Ninian was protesting, “It’s no concern of ours,” but no one was paying any attention to him. They were out in the street in a trice, shouting eagerly, “A clerk! A clerk!”