A Dream of John Ball; and, A King's Lesson, Page 2

  CHAPTER II

  THE MAN FROM ESSEX

  I entered the door and started at first with my old astonishment, withwhich I had woke up, so strange and beautiful did this interior seem tome, though it was but a pothouse parlour. A quaintly-carved side boardheld an array of bright pewter pots and dishes and wooden and earthenbowls; a stout oak table went up and down the room, and a carved oakchair stood by the chimney-corner, now filled by a very old mandim-eyed and white-bearded. That, except the rough stools and bencheson which the company sat, was all the furniture. The walls werepanelled roughly enough with oak boards to about six feet from thefloor, and about three feet of plaster above that was wrought in apattern of a rose stem running all round the room, freely and roughlydone, but with (as it seemed to my unused eyes) wonderful skill andspirit. On the hood of the great chimney a huge rose was wrought inthe plaster and brightly painted in its proper colours. There were adozen or more of the men I had seen coming along the street sittingthere, some eating and all drinking; their cased bows leaned againstthe wall, their quivers hung on pegs in the panelling, and in a cornerof the room I saw half-a-dozen bill-hooks that looked made more for warthan for hedge-shearing, with ashen handles some seven foot long.Three or four children were running about among the legs of the men,heeding them mighty little in their bold play, and the men seemedlittle troubled by it, although they were talking earnestly andseriously too. A well-made comely girl leaned up against the chimneyclose to the gaffer's chair, and seemed to be in waiting on thecompany: she was clad in a close-fitting gown of bright blue cloth,with a broad silver girdle daintily wrought, round her loins, a rosewreath was on her head and her hair hung down unbound; the gaffergrumbled a few words to her from time to time, so that I judged he washer grandfather.

  The men all looked up as we came into the room, my mate leading me bythe hand, and he called out in his rough, good-tempered voice, "Here,my masters, I bring you tidings and a tale; give it meat and drink thatit may be strong and sweet."

  "Whence are thy tidings, Will Green?" said one.

  My mate grinned again with the pleasure of making his joke once more ina bigger company: "It seemeth from heaven, since this good old ladhath no master," said he.

  "The more fool he to come here," said a thin man with a grizzled beard,amidst the laughter that followed, "unless he had the choice given himbetween hell and England."

  "Nay," said I, "I come not from heaven, but from Essex."

  As I said the word a great shout sprang from all mouths at once, asclear and sudden as a shot from a gun. For I must tell you that I knewsomehow, but I know not how, that the men of Essex were gathering torise against the poll-groat bailiffs and the lords that would turn themall into villeins again, as their grandfathers had been. And thepeople was weak and the lords were poor; for many a mother's son hadfallen in the war in France in the old king's time, and the Black Deathhad slain a many; so that the lords had bethought them: "We aregrowing poorer, and these upland-bred villeins are growing richer, andthe guilds of craft are waxing in the towns, and soon what will therebe left for us who cannot weave and will not dig? Good it were if wefell on all who are not guildsmen or men of free land, if we fell onsoccage tenants and others, and brought both the law and the stronghand on them, and made them all villeins in deed as they are now inname; for now these rascals make more than their bellies need of bread,and their backs of homespun, and the overplus they keep to themselves;and we are more worthy of it than they. So let us get the collar ontheir necks again, and make their day's work longer and theirbever-time shorter, as the good statute of the old king bade. And goodit were if the Holy Church were to look to it (and the Lollards mighthelp herein) that all these naughty and wearisome holidays were doneaway with; or that it should be unlawful for any man below the degreeof a squire to keep the holy days of the church, except in the heartand the spirit only, and let the body labour meanwhile; for does notthe Apostle say, 'If a man work not, neither should he eat'? And ifsuch things were done, and such an estate of noble rich men and worthypoor men upholden for ever, then would it be good times in England, andlife were worth the living."

  All this were the lords at work on, and such talk I knew was common notonly among the lords themselves, but also among their sergeants andvery serving-men. But the people would not abide it; therefore, as Isaid, in Essex they were on the point of rising, and word had gone howthat at St. Albans they were wellnigh at blows with the Lord Abbot'ssoldiers; that north away at Norwich John Litster was wiping the woadfrom his arms, as who would have to stain them red again, but not withgrain or madder; and that the valiant tiler of Dartford had smitten apoll-groat bailiff to death with his lath-rending axe for mishandling ayoung maid, his daughter; and that the men of Kent were on the move.

  Now, knowing all this I was not astonished that they shouted at thethought of their fellows the men of Essex, but rather that they saidlittle more about it; only Will Green saying quietly, "Well, thetidings shall be told when our fellowship is greater; fall-to now onthe meat, brother, that we may the sooner have thy tale." As he spokethe blue-clad damsel bestirred herself and brought me a cleantrencher--that is, a square piece of thin oak board scraped clean--anda pewter pot of liquor. So without more ado, and as one used to it, Idrew my knife out of my girdle and cut myself what I would of the fleshand bread on the table. But Will Green mocked at me as I cut, andsaid, "Certes, brother, thou hast not been a lord's carver, though butfor thy word thou mightest have been his reader. Hast thou seenOxford, scholar?"

  A vision of grey-roofed houses and a long winding street and the soundof many bells came over me at that word as I nodded "Yes" to him, mymouth full of salt pork and rye-bread; and then I lifted my pot and wemade the clattering mugs kiss and I drank, and the fire of the goodKentish mead ran through my veins and deepened my dream of things past,present, and to come, as I said: "Now hearken a tale, since ye willhave it so. For last autumn I was in Suffolk at the good town ofDunwich, and thither came the keels from Iceland, and on them were somemen of Iceland, and many a tale they had on their tongues; and withthese men I foregathered, for I am in sooth a gatherer of tales, andthis that is now at my tongue's end is one of them."

  So such a tale I told them, long familiar to me; but as I told it thewords seemed to quicken and grow, so that I knew not the sound of myown voice, and they ran almost into rhyme and measure as I told it; andwhen I had done there was silence awhile, till one man spake, but notloudly:

  "Yea, in that land was the summer short and the winter long; but menlived both summer and winter; and if the trees grew ill and the cornthrove not, yet did the plant called man thrive and do well. God sendus such men even here."

  "Nay," said another, "such men have been and will be, and belike arenot far from this same door even now."

  "Yea," said a third, "hearken a stave of Robin Hood; maybe that shallhasten the coming of one I wot of." And he fell to singing in a clearvoice, for he was a young man, and to a sweet wild melody, one of thoseballads which in an incomplete and degraded form you have read perhaps.My heart rose high as I heard him, for it was concerning the struggleagainst tyranny for the freedom of life, how that the wildwood and theheath, despite of wind and weather, were better for a free man than thecourt and the cheaping-town; of the taking from the rich to give to thepoor; of the life of a man doing his own will and not the will ofanother man commanding him for the commandment's sake. The men alllistened eagerly, and at whiles took up as a refrain a couplet at theend of a stanza with their strong and rough, but not unmusical voices.As they sang, a picture of the wild-woods passed by me, as they wereindeed, no park-like dainty glades and lawns, but rough and tangledthicket and bare waste and heath, solemn under the morning sun, anddreary with the rising of the evening wind and the drift of thenight-long rain.

  When he had done, another began in something of the same strain, butsinging more of a song than a story ballad; and thus much I remember ofit:

  The Sheriff is made a m
ighty lord, Of goodly gold he hath enow, And many a sergeant girt with sword; But forth will we and bend the bow. We shall bend the bow on the lily lea Betwixt the thorn and the oaken tree.

  With stone and lime is the burg wall built, And pit and prison are stark and strong, And many a true man there is spilt, And many a right man doomed by wrong.

  So forth shall we and bend the bow And the king's writ never the road shall know.

  Now yeomen walk ye warily, And heed ye the houses where ye go, For as fair and as fine as they may be, Lest behind your heels the door clap to. Fare forth with the bow to the lily lea Betwixt the thorn and the oaken tree.

  Now bills and bows I and out a-gate! And turn about on the lily lea! And though their company be great The grey-goose wing shall set us free. Now bent is the bow in the green abode And the king's writ knoweth not the road.

  So over the mead and over the hithe, And away to the wild-wood wend we forth; There dwell we yeomen bold and blithe Where the Sheriff's word is nought of worth. Bent is the bow on the lily lea Betwixt the thorn and the oaken tree.

  But here the song dropped suddenly, and one of the men held up his handas who would say, Hist! Then through the open window came the sound ofanother song, gradually swelling as though sung by men on the march.This time the melody was a piece of the plain-song of the church,familiar enough to me to bring back to my mind the great arches of somecathedral in France and the canons singing in the choir.

  All leapt up and hurried to take their bows from wall and corner; andsome had bucklers withal, circles of leather, boiled and then mouldedinto shape and hardened: these were some two hand-breadths across, withiron or brass bosses in the centre. Will Green went to the cornerwhere the bills leaned against the wall and handed them round to thefirst-comers as far as they would go, and out we all went gravely andquietly into the village street and the fair sunlight of the calmafternoon, now beginning to turn towards evening. None had saidanything since we first heard the new-come singing, save that as wewent out of the door the ballad-singer clapped me on the shoulder andsaid: "Was it not sooth that I said, brother, that Robin Hood shouldbring us John Ball?"