The Greatest Novels of Charles Reade. Charles Reade Reade

a bush hard by, I'll go fetch it;” and he arose with a cheerful and obliging countenance, and was retiring.

      Denys caught up his crossbow, and levelled it at his head. The man fell on his knees.

      Denys lowered his weapon, and pointed him back to his place. He rose and went back slowly and unsteadily, like one disjointed; and sick at heart as the mouse, that the cat lets go a little way, and then darts and replaces.

      “Sit down, friend,” said Denys grimly, in French.

      The man obeyed finger and tone, though he knew not a word of French.

      “Tell him the fire is not big enough for more than thee. He will take my meaning.”

      This being communicated by Gerard, the man grinned; ever since Denys spoke he had seemed greatly relieved. “I wist not ye were strangers,” said he to Gerard.

      Denys cut a piece of bear's ear, and offered it with grace to him he had just levelled crossbow at.

      He took it calmly, and drew a piece of bread from his wallet, and divided it with the pair. Nay, more, he winked and thrust his hand into the heap of leaves he sat on (Gerard grasped his axe ready to brain him) and produced a leathern bottle holding full two gallons. He put it to his mouth, and drank their healths, then handed it to Gerard; he passed it untouched to Denys.

      “Mort de ma vie!” cried the soldier, “it is Rhenish wine, and fit for the gullet of an archbishop. Here's to thee, thou prince of good fellows, wishing thee a short life and a merry one! Come, Gerard, sup! sup! Pshaw, never heed them, man! they heed not thee. Natheless, did I hang over such a skin of Rhenish as this, and three churls sat beneath a drinking it and offered me not a drop, I'd soon be down among them.”

      “Denys! Denys!”

      “My spirit would cut the cord, and womp would come my body amongst ye, with a hand on the bottle, and one eye winking, t'other.”

      Gerard started up with a cry of horror and his fingers to his ears, and was running from the place, when his eye fell on the watcher's axe. The tangible danger brought him back. He sat down again on the axe with his fingers in his ears.

      “Courage, l'ami, le diable est mort!” shouted Denys gaily, and offered him a piece of bear's ear, put it right under his nose as he stopped his ears. Gerard turned his head away with loathing.

      “Wine!” he gasped. “Heaven knows I have much need of it, with such companions as thee and—”

      He took a long draught of the Rhenish wine: it ran glowing through his veins, and warmed and strengthened his heart, but could not check his tremors whenever a gust of wind came. As for Denys and the other, they feasted recklessly, and plied the bottle unceasingly, and drank healths and caroused beneath that creaking sepulchre and its ghastly tenants.

      “Ask him how they came here,” said Denys, with his mouth full, and pointing up without looking.

      On this question being interpreted to the watcher, he replied that treason had been their end, diabolical treason and priest-craft. He then, being rendered communicative by drink, delivered a long prosy narrative, the purport of which was as follows. These honest gentlemen who now dangled here so miserably were all stout men and true, and lived in the forest by their wits. Their independence and thriving state excited the jealousy and hatred of a large portion of mankind, and many attempts were made on their lives and liberties; these the Virgin and their patron saints, coupled with their individual skill and courage constantly baffled. But yester eve a party of merchants came slowly on their mules from Dusseldorf. The honest men saw them crawling, and let them penetrate near a league into the forest, then set upon them to make them disgorge a portion of their ill-gotten gains. But alas! the merchants were no merchants at all, but soldiers of more than one nation, in the pay of the Archbishop of Cologne; haubergeons had they beneath their gowns, and weapons of all sorts at hand; natheless, the honest men fought stoutly, and pressed the traitors hard, when lo! horsemen, that had been planted in ambush many hours before, galloped up, and with these new diabolical engines of war, shot leaden bullets, and laid many an honest fellow low, and so quelled the courage of others that they yielded them prisoners. These being taken red-handed, the victors, who with malice inconceivable had brought cords knotted round their waists, did speedily hang, and by their side the dead ones, to make the gallanter show. “That one at the end was the captain. He never felt the cord. He was riddled with broad arrows and leaden balls or ever they could take him: a worthy man as ever cried, 'Stand and deliver!' but a little hasty, not much: stay! I forgot; he is dead. Very hasty, and obstinate as a pig. That one in the—buff jerkin is the lieutenant, as good a soul as ever lived: he was hanged alive. This one here, I never could abide; no (not that one; that is Conrad, my bosom friend); I mean this one right overhead in the chicken-toed shoon; you were always carrying tales, ye thief, and making mischief; you know you were; and, sirs, I am a man that would rather live united in a coppice than in a forest with backbiters and tale-bearers: strangers, I drink to you.” And so he went down the whole string, indicating with the neck of the bottle, like a showman with his pole, and giving a neat description of each, which though pithy was invariably false; for the showman had no real eye for character, and had misunderstood every one of these people.

      “Enough palaver!” cried Denys. “Marchons! Give me his axe: now tell him he must help you along.”

      The man's countenance fell, but he saw in Denys's eye that resistance would be dangerous; he submitted. Gerard it was who objected. He said, “Y pensez-vous? to put my hand on a thief, it maketh my flesh creep.”

      “Childishness! all trades must live. Besides, I have my reasons. Be not you wiser than your elder.”

      “No. Only if I am to lean on him I must have my hand in my bosom, still grasping the haft of my knife.”

      “It is a new attitude to walk in; but please thyself.”

      And in that strange and mixed attitude of tender offices and deadly suspicion the trio did walk. I wish I could draw them—I would not trust to the pen.

      The light of the watch-tower at Dusseldorf was visible as soon as they cleared the wood, and cheered Gerard. When, after an hour's march, the black outline of the tower itself and other buildings stood out clear to the eye, their companion halted and said gloomily, “You may as well slay me out of hand as take me any nearer the gates of Dusseldorf town.”

      On this being communicated to Denys, he said at once, “Let him go then, for in sooth his neck will be in jeopardy if he wends much further with us.” Gerard acquiesced as a matter of course. His horror of a criminal did not in the least dispose him to active co-operation with the law. But the fact is, that at this epoch no private citizen in any part of Europe ever meddled with criminals but in self-defence, except, by-the-by, in England, which, behind other nations in some things, was centuries before them all in this.

      The man's personal liberty being restored, he asked for his axe. It was given him. To the friends' surprise he still lingered. Was he to have nothing for coming so far out of his way with them?

      “Here are two batzen, friend.

      “Add the wine, the good Rhenish?”

      “Did you give aught for it?”

      “Ay! the peril of my life.”

      “Hum! what say you, Denys?”

      “I say it was worth its weight in gold. Here, lad, here be silver groshen, one for every acorn on that gallows tree; and here is one more for thee, who wilt doubtless be there in due season.”

      The man took the coins, but still lingered.

      “Well! what now?” cried Gerard, who thought him shamefully overpaid already. “Dost seek the hide off our bones?”

      “Nay, good sirs, but you have seen to-night how parlous a life is mine. Ye be true men, and your prayers avail; give me then a small trifle of a prayer, an't please you; for I know not one.”

      Gerard's choler began to rise at the egotistical rogue; moreover, ever since his wound he had felt gusts of irritability.