Читать книгу Below the Salt - Thomas B. Costain - Страница 30

Table of Contents

The boy was called Richard of Rawen from the beginning. To give an idea of the kind of life he lived, it becomes necessary now to tell how it came about that this once powerful family subsisted under the roofless walls of the old priory, and of the way in which their living was contrived. After the Conquest, William had divided up the lands among his own followers, and the extensive holdings of one Cymric the Saxon were given to Odo de Baudene, who had been in the first charge at Hastings. The rightful owner, who was a close connection of the once great Earl Godwine, was allowed to retain no more than a small parcel of rather sour land which included the priory from which the Saxon monks had been ejected. Finding himself in a desperate pass, Cymric had built himself a wattled structure against a part of the east wall, and his successors had continued there ever since.

The boy did not realize that the house in which he lived was small and mean. Compared with the thatched tofts in which the peasants lived, it seemed grand and pretentious. What if there was only one room on the ground floor? It had three windows with hinged shutters, a large hearth on which five-foot logs could be burned, and an oak cupboard which actually contained bits of silver and pewter. That the peaked solar apartment above, reached by an outside tier of wooden steps, was the only other room and that all members of the family slept there together, except Dirk the villein, did not detract from his conviction, nor did the fact that most of the pointed stakes in the defensive wall around the house had rotted away like the teeth in a miser’s head.

Young Richard lived in the company of Tostig, the son of Sigurd. Tostig was three years older and a fine sturdy lad with a square face and gray eyes filled with courage and intelligence. It was the stout Tostig’s duty to see his master’s son through all the crises of boyhood and to initiate him into the ways of life. The days began at dawn and ended with the coming of darkness at night. When cocks began to crow somewhere within the priory walls, Tostig would stir on his pallet of straw and raise his head from the billet of wood which served him as a pillow.

“Master Richard,” he would whisper, “the day begins.”

Richard would whimper a little. “It would be nice, Tostig, to sleep a little longer. Just for once. I’m very tired.”

But Tostig was a hard taskmaster. “Up!” he would command. “Don’t you want to grow up to be a fine, strong man like your father?”

“But, Tostig, couldn’t I sleep just a little longer and grow up to be half like my father?”

“Master Rick,” said Tostig in a voice loud enough almost to disturb the boy’s father, who slept in the one bed the household boasted at the other side of the solar, “if you don’t foot the boards at once, you will grow up to be a man like Dirk.”

This was a dire prospect which could not be disregarded. Dirk was as old and dirty as the sin-eaters who were always to be found at funerals, ready to assume the sins of the deceased for a hot dinner. He sat down with the family at meals, but always at the far end, so the odors of the fields and the manure pits would not be too noticeable, and he slept in what was left of the abbot’s house at the far end of the enclosure.

Richard rose at once. He was not going to grow up like Dirk. But, as he drew on his hose and trussed up his points, he said to Tostig: “All right, you old Tostig. I’m up and no one can stop me now from growing up like my father. But you’ll have to play Stip, Step, Stirk this morning to make up for it.”

Tostig was about ten years old at this point and, to the amazement of everyone who watched him, he was already a skillful archer. He could send an arrow from one end of the monks’ enclosure to the other and hit the mark every time. He was, naturally enough, so proud of his skill that he was always glad to display it. So, as soon as they were dressed, he took up his station at the farthest point from the abbot’s house and both boys began to chant in loud voices:

“Stip, Step, Stirk! Dirty old Dirk!”

As their shrill voices sounded joyously on the morning air, Tostig shot arrow after arrow at the door of the black little hole which the abbot had once used as a detention cell and which Dirk had picked as a bedroom because it was the only part which still had a ceiling over it. Tostig did not miss once, and the bolts landed with a fine zing and remained quivering in the wood. Needless to state, old Dirk did not dare open the door until they tired of the sport and went somewhere else, by which time his breakfast was cold.

Tostig taught his charge everything that he knew himself about the woods: how to set traps and how to skin rabbits and squirrels. He ran races with him (and sometimes managed to lose), he taught him to ride, he taught him the tricks of wrestling and how to swing a quarterstaff. When Richard was very young he would take him to the one arm of the now dismantled cloisters and hold him on the edge of the stone trench which had once served the convenience of the monks. They bathed together in the little burn which twisted its way through the grounds. They went fishing in the spring and in the autumn tramped great distances to gather nuts in canvas bags which would be carried up to the solar to dry out. They kept watch on the small herds of cattle and sheep which Edward the Saxon owned. In the winter when the cold blew down from the north and west they would see to it that the poor animals were sheltered in the cloisters and the slype, a passage leading to what was left of the chapter house. They wove branches into covers for the gaping holes in the masonry which had once been windows, to keep out wind and snow.

Tostig saw to it also that Richard adopted the right attitude toward the people they encountered. For the men who worked in the fields with plow and shovel he himself would have a wave of the hand and a friendly word, but if his charge did the same, he would growl under his breath. “No, no! They’re beneath you. You can’t be familiar with any of them. Raise a hand as you pass. But not too high! Just high enough to show you’ve seen them.”

When they met members of the great families thereabouts, he counseled the same restraint but for a different reason. “You’re as good as they are, Master Rick. Better, even. Let them speak first. If they don’t, ride by and don’t turn an eye their way. No eagerness, mind you. Always remember this, Master Rick. Your fathers were kin to great Earl Godwine and to brave King Harold. These people are robbers. They came over and stole our land, the lying, sneaking Long-Noses! Look any Norman straight in the eye and he’ll turn his head away.”

Richard followed these instructions but sometimes it was hard. There was one occasion when they encountered a knight and his lady and a girl of about his own age who rode on the saddle in front of her father. She was a pretty girl with long curls and she was dressed as sumptuously as her mother, who was also pretty. The girl looked curiously at Richard as she rode by but her parents paid no more attention to the two boys than they would give a villein with a hoe in his hands.

“Who was that?” asked Richard when the Norman family and their long train had passed down the road.

“The Lord of Doreham and his lady.”

Richard had heard much talk about the Lord of Doreham and his lady. They were very rich, very influential, and very stiff-necked. “There was a girl with them,” he said.

“Their only child,” commented Tostig, who seemed to know everything. “Her name is Adela.”

“I didn’t know girls could be as pretty as that,” said Richard. After a pause he added, with as much enthusiasm as he might have shown over a fine pelt, “She has red hair!”