The Story of Francis Cludde

But hope and a fixed aim form no bad makeshifts for happiness. Striking the broad London road as I had purposed I slept that night at Ryton Dunsmoor, and the next at Towcester; and the third day, which rose bright and frosty, found me stepping gayly southward, travel-stained indeed, but dry and whole. My spirits rose with the temperature. For a time I put the past behind me, and found amusement in the sights of the road; in the heavy wagons and long trains of pack-horses, and the cheery greetings which met me with each mile. After all, I had youth and strength, and the world before me; and particularly Stony Stratford, where I meant to dine.

There was one trouble common among wayfarers which did not touch me; and that was the fear of robbers, for he would be a sturdy beggar who would rob an armed foot-passenger for the sake of an angel; and the groats were gone. So I felt no terrors on that account, and even when about noon I heard a horseman trot up behind me, and rein in his horse so as to keep pace with me at a walk, step for step-a thing which might have seemed suspicious to some-I took no heed of him. I was engaged with my first view of Stratford, and did not turn my head. We had walked on so for fifty paces or more, before it struck me as odd that the man did not pass me.

Then I turned, and shading my eyes from the sun, which stood just over his shoulder, said, "Good-day, friend."

"Good-day, master," he answered.

He was a stout fellow, looking like a citizen, although he had a sword by his side, and wore it with an air of importance which the sunshine of opportunity might have ripened into a swagger. His dress was plain; and he sat a good hackney as a miller's sack might have sat it. His face was the last thing I looked at. When I raised my eyes to it, I got an unpleasant start. The man was no stranger. I knew him in a moment for the messenger who had summoned me to the Chancellor's presence.

The remembrance did not please me; and reading in the fellow's sly look that he recognized me, and thought he had made a happy discovery on finding me, I halted abruptly. He did the same.

"It is a fine morning," he said, taken aback by my sudden movement, but affecting an indifference which the sparkle in his eye belied. "A rare day for the time of year."

"It is," I answered, gazing steadily at him.

"Going to London? Or may be only to Stratford?" he hazarded. He fidgeted uncomfortably under my eye, but still pretended ignorance of me.

"That is as may be," I answered.

"No offense, I am sure," he said.

I cast a quick glance up and down the road. There happened to be no one in sight. "Look here!" I replied, stepping forward to lay my hand on the horse's shoulder-but the man reined back and prevented me, thereby giving me a clew to his character-"you are in the service of the Bishop of Winchester?"

His face fell, and he could not conceal his disappointment at being recognized. "Well, master," he answered reluctantly, "perhaps I am, and perhaps I am not."

"That is enough," I said shortly. "And you know me. You need not lie about it, man, for I can see you do. Now, look here, Master Steward, or whatever your name may be-"

"It is Master Pritchard," he put in sulkily; "and I am not ashamed of it."

"Very well. Then let us understand one another. Do you mean to interfere with me?"

He grinned. "Well, to be plain, I do," he replied, reining his horse back another step. "I have orders to look out for you, and have you stopped if I find you. And I must do my duty, sir; I am sworn to it, Master Cludde."

"Right," said I calmly; "and I must do mine, which is to take care of my skin." And I drew my sword and advanced upon him with a flourish. "We will soon decide this little matter," I added grimly, one eye on him and one on the empty road, "if you will be good enough to defend yourself."

But there was no fight in the fellow. By good luck, too, he was so startled that he did not do what he might have done with safety; namely, retreat, and keep me in sight until some passers-by came up. He did give back, indeed, but it was against the bank. "Have a care," he cried in a fume, his eye following my sword nervously; he did not try to draw his own. "There is no call for fighting, I say."

"But I say there is," I replied bluntly. "Call and cause! Either you fight me, or I go where I please."

"You may go to Bath for me!" he spluttered, his face the color of a turkey-cock's wattles with rage.

"Do you mean it, my friend?" I said, and I played my point about his leg, half-minded to give him a little prod by way of earnest. "Make up your mind."

"Yes!" he shrieked out, suspecting my purpose, and bouncing about in his saddle like a parched pea. "Yes, I say!" he roared. "Do you hear me? You go your way, and I will go mine."

"That is a bargain," I said quietly; "and mind you keep to it."

I put up my sword with my face turned from him, lest he should see the curl of my lip and the light in my eyes. In truth, I was uncommonly well pleased with myself, and was thinking that if I came through all my adventures as well, I should do merrily. Outwardly, however, I tried to ignore my victory, and to make things as easy as I could for my friend-if one may call a man who will not fight him a friend, a thing I doubt. "Which way are you going?" I asked amicably; "to Stratford?"

He nodded, for he was too sulky to speak.

"All right!" I said cheerfully, feeling that my dignity could take care of itself now. "Then so far we may go together. Only do you remember the terms. After dinner each goes his own way."

He nodded again, and we turned, and went on in silence, eying one another askance, like two ill-matched dogs coupled together. But, luckily, our forced companionship did not last long, a quarter of a mile and a bend in the road bringing us to the first low, gray houses of Stratford; a long, straggling village it seemed, made up of inns strewn along the road, like beads threaded on a rosary. And to be sure, to complete the likeness, we came presently upon an ancient stone cross standing on the green. I pulled up in front of this with a sigh of pleasure, for on either side of it, one facing the other, was an inn of the better class.

"Well," I said, "which shall it be? The Rose and Crown, or the Crown without the Rose?"

"Choose for yourself," he answered churlishly. "I go to the other."

I shrugged my shoulders. After all, you cannot make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, and if a man has not courage he is not likely to have good-fellowship. But the words angered me, nevertheless, for a shabby, hulking fellow lounging at my elbow overheard them and grinned; a hiccoughing, blear-eyed man he was as I had ever met, with a red nose and the rags of a tattered cassock about him. I turned away in annoyance, and chose the "Crown" at hazard; and pushing my way through a knot of horses that stood tethered at the door, went in, leaving the two to their devices.

I found a roaring fire in the great room, and three or four yeomen standing about it, drinking ale. But I was hot from walking, so, after saluting them and ordering my meal, I went and sat for choice on a bench by the window away from the fire. The window was one of a kind common in Warwickshire houses; long and low and beetle-browed, the story above projecting over it. I sat here a minute looking idly out at the inn opposite, a heavy stone building with a walled courtyard attached to it; such an inn as was common enough about the time of the Wars of the Roses when wayfarers looked rather for safety than comfort. Presently I saw a boy come out of it and start up the road at a run. Then, a minute later, the ragged fellow I had seen on the green came out and lurched across the road. He seemed to be making, though uncertainly, for my inn, and, sure enough, just as my bread and bacon-the latter hot and hissing-were put before me, he staggered into the room, bringing a strong smell of ale and onions with him. "Pax vobiscum!" he said, leering at me with tipsy solemnity.

I guessed what he was-a monk, one of those unfortunates still to be found here and there up and down the country, whom King Henry, when he put down the monasteries, had made homeless. I did not look on the class with much favor, thinking that for most of them the cloister, even if the Queen should succeed in setting the abbeys on their legs again, would have few attractions. But I saw that the simple farmers received his scrap of Latin with respect, and I nodded civilly as I went on with my meal.

I was not to get off so easily, however. He came and planted himself opposite to me.

"Pax vobiscum, my son," he repeated. "The ale is cheap here, and good."

"So is the ham, good father," I replied cheerfully, not pausing in my attack on the victuals. "I will answer for so much."

"Well, well," the knave replied with ready wit, "I breakfasted early. I am content. Landlord, another plate and a full tankard. The young gentleman would have me dine with him."

I could not tell whether to be angry or to laugh at his impudence.

"The gentleman says he will answer for it!" repeated the rascal, with a twinkle in his eye, as the landlord hesitated. He was by no means so drunk as he looked.

"No, no, father," I cried, joining in the general laugh into which the farmers by the fire broke. "A cup of ale is in reason, and for that I will pay, but for no more. Drink it, and wish me Godspeed."

"I will do more than that, lad," he answered. Swaying to and fro my cup, which he had seized in his grasp, he laid his hand on the window-ledge beside me, as though to steady himself, and stooped until his coarse, puffy face was but a few inches from mine. "More than that," he whispered hoarsely; and his eyes, peering into mine, were now sober and full of meaning. "If you do not want to be put in the stocks or worse, make tracks! Make tracks, lad!" he continued. "Your friend over there-he is a niggardly oaf-has sent for the hundredman and the constable, and you are the quarry. So the word is, Go! That," he added aloud, standing erect again, with a drunken smile, "is for your cup of ale; and good coin too!"

For half a minute I sat quite still; taken aback, and wondering, while the bacon cooled on the plate before me, what I was to do. I did not doubt the monk was telling the truth. Why should he lie to me? And I cursed my folly in trusting to a coward's honor or a serving-man's good faith. But lamentations were useless. What was I to do? I had no horse, and no means of getting one. I was in a strange country, and to try to escape on foot from pursuers who knew the roads, and had the law on their side, would be a hopeless undertaking. Yet to be haled back to Coton End a prisoner-I could not face that. Mechanically I raised a morsel of bacon to my lips, and as I did so, a thought occurred to me-an idea suggested by some talk I had heard the evening before at Towcester.

Fanciful as the plan was, I snatched at it; and knowing each instant to be precious, took my courage in my hand-and my tankard. "Here," I cried, speaking suddenly and loudly, "here is bad luck to purveyors, Master Host!"

There were a couple of stablemen within hearing, lounging in the doorway, besides the landlord and his wife and the farmers. A villager or two also had dropped in, and there were two peddlers lying half asleep in the corner. All these pricked up their ears more or less at my words. But, like most country folk, they were slow to take in anything new or unexpected; and I had to drink afresh and say again, "Here is bad luck to purveyors!" before any one took it up.

Then the landlord showed he understood.

"Ay, so say I!" he cried, with an oath. "Purveyors, indeed! It is such as they give the Queen a bad name."

"God bless her!" quoth the monk loyally.

"And drown the purveyors!" a farmer exclaimed.

"They were here a year ago, and left us as bare as a shorn sheep," struck in a strapping villager, speaking at a white heat, but telling me no news; for this was what I had heard at Towcester the night before. "The Queen should lie warm if she uses all the wool they took! And the pack-horses they purveyed to carry off the plunder-why, the packmen avoid Stratford ever since as though we had the Black Death! Oh, down with the purveyors, say I! The first that comes this way I will show the bottom of the Ouse. Ay, that I will, though I hang for it!"

"Easy! easy, Tom Miller!" the host interposed, affecting an air of assurance, even while he cast an eye of trouble at his flitches. "It will be another ten years before they harry us again. There is Potter's Pury! They never took a tester's worth from Potter's Pury! No, nor from Preston Gobion! But they will go to them next, depend upon it!"