The Herd Boy and His Hermit

‘Go thy ways, my bairn, to wash in the burn. Here’s thy comb. I must have the lassie up before the shepherd comes back, though ‘tis amost a pity to wake her! There, she is stirring! Best be off with thee, my bonnie lad.’

It was spoken more in the tone of nurse to nursling than of mother to son, still less that of mistress to farm boy; but Hal obeyed, only observing, ‘Take care of her.’

‘Ay, my pretty, will not I,’ murmured the old woman, as the child turned round on her pillow, put up a hand, rubbed her eyes, and disclosed a pair of sleepy brown orbs, gazed about, and demanded, ‘What’s this? Who’s this?’

‘’Tis Hob Hogward’s hut, my bonnie lamb, where you are full welcome! Here, take a sup of warm milk.’

‘I mind me now,’ said the girl, sitting up, and holding out her hands for the bowl. ‘They all left me, and the lad brought me—a great lubber lout—’

‘Nay, nay, mistress, you’ll scarce say so when you see him by day—a well-grown youth as can bear himself with any.’

‘Where is he?’ asked the girl, gazing round; ‘I want him to take me back. This place is not one for me. The Sisters will be seeking me! Oh, what a coil they must be in!’

‘We will have you back, my bairn, so soon as my goodman can go with you, but now I would have you up and dressed, ay, and washed, ere he and Hal come in. Then after meat and prayer you will be ready to go.’

‘To Greystone Priory,’ returned the girl. ‘Yea, I would have thee to know,’ she added, with a little dignity that sat drolly on her bare feet and disordered hair and cap as she rose out of bed, ‘that the Sisters are accountable for me. I am the Lady Anne St. John. My father is a lord in Bedfordshire, but he is gone to the wars in Burgundy, and bestowed me in a convent at York while he was abroad, but the Mother thought her house would be safer if I were away at the cell at Greystone when Queen Margaret and the Red Rose came north.’

‘And is that the way they keep you safe?’ asked the hostess, who meanwhile was attending to her in a way that, if the Lady Anne had known it, was like the tendance of her own nurse at home, instead of that of a rough peasant woman.

‘Oh, we all like the chase, and the Mother had a new cast of hawks that she wanted to fly. There came out a heron, and she threw off the new one, and it went careering up—and up—and we all rode after, and just as the bird was about to pounce down, into a dyke went my pony, Imp, and not one of them saw! Not Bertram Selby, the Sisters, nor the groom, nor the rabble rout that had come out of Greystone; and before I could get free they were off; and the pony, Imp of Evil that he is, has not learnt to know me or my voice, and would not let me catch him, but cantered off—either after the other horses or to the Priory. I knew not where I was, and halloaed myself hoarse, but no one heard, and I went on and on, and lost my way!’

‘I did hear tell that the Lady Prioress minded her hawks more than her Hours,’ said Mother Doll.

‘And that’s sooth,’ said the Lady Anne, beginning to prove herself a chatterbox. ‘The merlins have better hoods than the Sisters; and as to the Hours, no one ever gets up in the night to say Nocturns or even Matins but old Sister Scholastica, and she is as strict and cross as may be.’

Here the flow of confidence was interrupted by the return of Hal, who gazed eagerly, though in a shamefaced way, at the guest as he set down a bowl of ewe milk. She was a well-grown girl of ten, slender, and bearing herself like one high bred and well trained in deportment; and her face was delicately tinted on an olive skin, with fine marked eyebrows, and dark bright eyes, and her little hunting dress of green, and the hood, set on far back, became the dark locks that curled in rings beneath.

She saw a slender lad, dark-haired and dark-eyed, ruddy and embrowned by mountain sun and air; and the bow with which he bent before her had something of the rustic lout, and there was a certain shyness over him that hindered him from addressing her.

‘So, shepherd,’ she said, ‘when wilt thou take me back to Greystone?’

‘Father will fix that,’ interposed the housewife; ‘meanwhile, ye had best eat your porridge. Here is Father, in good time with the cows’ milk.’

The rugged broad-shouldered shepherd made his salutation duly to the young lady, and uttered the information that there was a black cloud, like snow, coming up over the fells to the south-west.

‘But I must fare back to Greystone!’ said the damsel. ‘They will be in a mighty coil what has become of me.’

‘They would be in a worse coil if they found your bones under a snow wreath.’

Hal went to the door and spied out, as if the tidings were rather pleasant to him than otherwise. The goodwife shivered, and reached out to close the shutter, and there being no glass to the windows, all the light that came in was through the chinks.

‘It would serve them right for not minding me better,’ said the maiden composedly. ‘Nay, it is as merry here as at Greystone, with Sister Margaret picking out one’s broidery, and Father Cuthbert making one pore over his crabbed parchments.’

‘Oh, does this Father teach Latin?’ exclaimed Hal with eager interest.

‘Of course he doth! The Mother at York promised I should learn whatever became a damsel of high degree,’ said the girl, drawing herself up.

‘I would he would teach me!’ sighed the boy.

‘Better break thy fast and mind thy sheep,’ said the old woman, as if she feared his getting on dangerous ground; and placing the bowl of porridge on the rough table, she added, ‘Say the Benedicite, lad, and fall to.’ Then, as he uttered the blessing, she asked the guest whether she preferred ewes’ milk or cows’ milk, a luxury no one else was allowed, all eating their porridge contentedly with a pinch of salt, Hob showing scant courtesy, the less since his guest’s rank had been made known.

By the time they had finished, snowflakes—an early autumn storm—were drifting against the shutter, and a black cloud was lowering over the hills. Hob foretold a heavy fall of snow, and called on Hal to help him and Piers fold the flock more securely, sleepy Watch and his old long-haired collie mother rising at the same call. Lady Anne sprang up at the same time, insisting that she must go and help to feed the poor sheep, but she was withheld, much against her will, by Mother Dolly, though she persisted that snow was nothing to her, and it was a fine jest to be out of the reach of the Sisters, who mewed her up in a cell, like a messan dog. However, she was much amused by watching, and thinking she assisted in, Mother Dolly’s preparations for ewe milk cheese-making; and by-and-by Hal came in, shaking the snow off the sheepskin he had worn over his leathern coat. Hob had sent him in, as the weather was too bad for him, and he and Anne crouched on opposite sides of the wide hearth as he dried and warmed himself, and cosseted the cat which Anne had tried to caress, but which showed a decided preference for the older friend.

‘Our Baudrons at Greystone loves me better than that,’ said Anne. ‘She will come to me sooner than even to Sister Scholastica!’

‘My Tib came with us when we came here. Ay, Tib! purr thy best!’ as he held his fingers over her, and she rubbed her smooth head against him.

‘Can she leap? Baudrons leaps like a horse in the tilt-yard.’

‘Cannot she! There, my lady pussy, show what thou canst do to please the demoiselle,’ and he held his arms forward with clasped hands, so that the grey cat might spring over them, and Lady Anne cried out with delight.

Again and again the performance was repeated, and pussy was induced to dance after a string dangled before her, to roll over and play in apparent ecstasy with a flake of wool, as if it were a mouse, and Watch joined in the game in full amity. Mother Dolly, busy with her distaff, looked on, not displeased, except when she had to guard her spindle from the kitten’s pranks, but she was less happy when the children began to talk.

‘You have seen a tilt-yard?’

‘Yea, indeed,’ he answered dreamily. ‘The poor squire was hurt—I did not like it! It is gruesome.’

‘Oh, no! It is a noble sport! I loved our tilt-yard at Bletso. Two knights could gallop at one another in the lists, as if they were out hunting. Oh! to hear the lances ring against the shields made one’s heart leap up! Where was yours?’

Here Dolly interrupted hastily, ‘Hal, lad, gang out to the shed and bring in some more sods of turf. The fire is getting low.’

‘Here’s a store, mother—I need not go out,’ said Hal, passing to a pile in the corner. ‘It is too dark for thee to see it.’

‘But where was your castle?’ continued the girl. ‘I am sure you have lived in a castle.’

Insensibly the two children had in addressing one another changed the homely singular pronoun to the more polite, if less grammatical, second person plural. The boy laughed, nodded his head, and said, ‘You are a little witch.’

‘No great witchcraft to hear that you speak as we do at home in Bedfordshire, not like these northern boors, that might as well be Scots!’

‘I am not from Bedfordshire,’ said the lad, looking much amused at her perplexity.

‘Who art thou then?’ she cried peremptorily.

‘I? I am Hal the shepherd boy, as I told thee before.’

‘No shepherd boy are you! Come, tell me true.’

Dolly thought it time to interfere. She heard an imaginary bleat, and ordered Hal out to see what was the matter, hindering the girl by force from running after him, for the snow was coming down in larger flakes than ever. Nevertheless, when her husband was heard outside she threw a cloak over her head and hurried out to speak with him. ‘That maid will make our lad betray himself ere another hour is over their heads!’

‘Doth she do it wittingly?’ asked the shepherd gravely.

‘Nay, ‘tis no guile, but each child sees that the other is of gentle blood, and women’s wits be sharp and prying, and the maid will never rest till she has wormed out who he is.’

‘He promised me never to say, nor doth he know.’

‘Thee! Much do the hests of an old hogherd weigh against the wiles of a young maid!’

‘Lord Hal is a lad of his word. Peace with thy lords and ladies, woman, thou’lt have the archers after him at once.’