The Cloister and the Hearth: A Tale of the Middle Ages. Charles Reade Reade

of those who make little incidents wherever they go. He passed nobody without addressing him. "They don't understand it, but it wakes them up," said he. But, whenever they fell in with a monk or priest, he pulled a long face, and sought the reverend father's blessing, and fearlessly poured out on him floods of German words in such order as not to produce a single German sentence. He doffed his cap to every woman, high or low, he caught sight of, and with eagle eye discerned her best feature, and complimented her on it in his native tongue, well adapted to such matters: and, at each carrion crow or magpie, down came his cross-bow, and he would go a furlong off the road to circumvent it; and indeed he did shoot one old crow with laudable neatness and despatch, and carried it to the nearest hen-roost, and there slipped in and set it upon a nest. "The good-wife will say, 'Alack, here is Beelzebub a hatching of my eggs.'"

      "No, you forget, he is dead," objected Gerard.

      "So he is, so he is. But she doesn't know that, not having the luck to be acquainted with me, who carry the good news from city to city, uplifting men's hearts."

      Such was Denys in time of peace.

      Our travellers towards nightfall reached a village; it was a very small one, but contained a place of entertainment. They searched for it, and found a small house with barn and stables. In the former was the everlasting stove, and the clothes drying round it on lines, and a traveller or two sitting morose. Gerard asked for supper. "Supper? We have no time to cook for travellers; we only provide lodging, good lodging for man and beast. You can have some beer."

      "Madman, who, born in Holland, sought other lands!" snorted Gerard in Dutch. The landlady started.

      "What gibberish is that?" asked she, and crossed herself with looks of superstitious alarm. "You can buy what you like in the village, and cook it in our oven; but, prithee, mutter no charms nor sorceries here, good man; don't ye now, it do make my flesh creep so."

      They scoured the village for food, and ended by supping on roasted eggs and brown bread.

      At a very early hour their chambermaid came for them. It was a rosy-cheeked old fellow with a lanthorn.

      They followed him. He led them across a dirty farm-yard, where they had much ado to pick their steps, and brought them into a cow-house. There, on each side of every cow, was laid a little clean straw, and a tied bundle of ditto for a pillow. The old man looked down on this his work with paternal pride. Not so Gerard. "What, do you set Christian men to lie among cattle?"

      "Well, it is hard upon the poor beasts. They have scarce room to turn."

      "Oh! what, it is not hard on us then?"

      "Where is the hardship? I have lain among them all my life. Look at me! I am four score, and never had a headache in all my born days—all along of lying among the kye. Bless your silly head, kine's breath is ten times sweeter to drink nor Christians'. You try it!" and he slammed the bedroom door.

      "Denys, where are you?" whined Gerard.

      "Here, on her other side."

      "What are you doing?"

      "I know not. But, as near as I can guess, I think I must be going to sleep. What are you at?"

      "I am saying my prayers."

      "Forget me not in them!"

      "Is it likely? Denys I shall soon have done: do not go to sleep, I want to talk."

      "Despatch then! for I feel—augh—like—like—floating—in the sky—on a warm cloud."

      "Denys!"

      "Augh! eh! hallo! is it time to get up?"

      "Alack, no. There, I hurried my orisons to talk; and look at you, going to sleep! We shall be starved before morning, having no coverlets."

      "Well, you know what to do."

      "Not I, in sooth."

      "Cuddle the cow."

      "Thank you."

      "Burrow in the straw then. You must be very new to the world, to grumble at this. How would you bear to lie on the field of battle on a frosty night, as I did t'other day, stark naked, with nothing to keep me warm but the carcass of a fellow I had been and helped kill?"

      "Horrible! horrible! Tell me all about it! Oh but this is sweet."

      "Well, we had a little battle in Brabant, and won a little victory, but it cost us dear: several arbalestriers turned their toes up, and I among them."

      "Killed, Denys? come now!"

      "Dead as mutton. Stuck full of pike-holes till the blood ran out of me, like the good wine of Mâcon from the trodden grapes. It is right bounteous in me to pour the tale in minstrel phrase for—augh—I am sleepy. Augh—now where was I?"

      "Left dead on the field of battle, bleeding like a pig; that is to say like grapes, or something; go on, prithee go on, 'tis a sin to sleep in the midst of a good story."

      "Granted. Well, some of those vagabonds, that strip the dead soldier on the field of glory, came and took every rag off me; they wrought me no further ill, because there was no need."

      "No: you were dead."

      "C'est convenu. This must have been at sundown; and with the night came a shrewd frost that barkened the blood on my wounds, and stopped all the rivulets that were running from my heart, and about midnight I awoke as from a trance."

      "And thought you were in heaven?" asked Gerard eagerly, being a youth inoculated with monkish tales.

      "Too frost bitten for that, mon gars; besides, I heard the wounded groaning on all sides; so I knew I was in the old place. I saw I could not live the night through without cover. I groped about shivering and shivering; at last one did suddenly leave groaning. 'You are sped,' said I, so made up to him, and true enough he was dead, but warm, you know. I took my lord in my arms; but was too weak to carry him: so rolled with him into a ditch hard by: and there my comrades found me in the morning properly stung with nettles and hugging a dead Fleming for the bare life."

      Gerard shuddered. "And this is war; this is the chosen theme of poets and troubadours, and Reden Ryckers. Truly was it said by the men of old 'dulce bellum inexpertis.'"

      "Tu dis?"

      "I say—oh what stout hearts some men have!"

      "N'est-ce pas, p'tit? So after that sort—thing—this sort thing is heaven. Soft—warm—good company comradancow—cou'age—diable—m—ornk!"

      And the glib tongue was still for some hours.

      In the morning Gerard was wakened by a liquid hitting his eye, and it was Denys employing the cow's udder as a squirt.

      "Oh fie!" cried Gerard, "to waste the good milk:" and he took a horn out of his wallet. "Fill this! but indeed I see not what right we have to meddle with her milk at all."

      "Make your mind easy! Last night la camarade was not nice; but what then, true friendship dispenses with ceremony. To-day we make as free with her."

      "Why what did she do, poor thing?"

      "Ate my pillow."

      "Ha! ha!"

      "On waking I had to hunt for my head, and found it down in the stable gutter. She ate our pillow from us, we drink our pillow from her. A votre santé, madame; et sans rancune;" and the dog drank her to her own health.

      "The ancient was right though," said Gerard. "Never have I risen so refreshed since I left my native land. Henceforth let us shun great towns, and still lie in a convent or a cow-house; for I'd liever sleep on fresh straw than on linen well washed six months agone; and the breath of kine it is sweeter than that of Christians, let alone the garlic, which men and women folk affect, but cowen abhor from, and so do I, St. Bavon be my witness!"

      The soldier eyed him from head to foot: "Now but for that little tuft on your chin I should take you for