The White Company Chapter 7 - How the Three Comrades Journeyed through the Woodlands

**Arthur Conan Doyle** (0:23)
CHAPTER VII How the Three Comrades Journeyed Through the Woodlands At early dawn the country inn was all alive, for it was rare indeed that an hour of daylight would be wasted at a time when lighting was so scarce and dear. Indeed early as it was when Dame Eliza began to stir, it seemed that others could be earlier still, for the door was ajar, and the learned student of Cambridge had taken himself off with a mind which was too intent upon the high things of antiquity to stoop to consider the forpence which he owed for bed and board. It was the shrill outcry of the landlady when she found her loss, and the clucking of the hens which had streamed in through the open door that first broke in upon the slumbers of the tired wayfarers.
Once afoot, it was not long before the company began to disperse. A sleek mule with red trappings was brought round from some neighbouring shed for the physician, and he ambled away with much dignity upon his road to Southampton.
The tooth-drawer and the gleam man called for a cup of small ale apiece, and started off together for ringward fare, the old jongleur looking very yellow in the eye, and swollen in the face after his overnight potations.
The archer, however, who had drunk more than any man in the room, was as merry as a grig, and having kissed the matron and chased the maid up the ladder once more, he went out to the brook and came back with the water dripping from his face and hair. Hola, my man of peace! he cried to Alan. Whither are you bent this morning? To Minstead, quoth he. My brother Simon Edrickson is sockman there, and I go to bide with him for a while. I prithee, let me have my score, good dame. Score, indeed! cried she, standing with upraised hands in front of the panel on which Alan had worked the night before. Say, rather, what it is that I owe thee, good youth? Ay, this is indeed a pied merlin, with a lefret under its claws, as I am a living woman. By the rude of waltham, but thy touch is deft and dainty. And see the red eye of it, cried the maid. Ay, and the open beak, and the ruffled wing, added Hordeljohn. By my hilt! cried the archer. It is indeed the very bird itself! The young clerk flushed with pleasure at this chorus of praise, rude and indiscriminate indeed, and yet so much heartier and less grudging than any which he had ever heard from the critical brother Jerome or the short-spoken abbot.
There was, it would seem, great kindness, as well as great wickedness in this world of which he had heard so little that was good. His hostess would hear nothing of his paying either for bed or for board, while the archer and hordal John placed a hand upon either shoulder and led him off to the board, where some smoking fish, a dish of spinach and a jug of milk were laid out for their breakfast.
I should not be surprised to learn, my comrade, said the soldier, as he heaped a slice of fish upon Alan's trencher of bread, that you could read written things since you are so ready with your brushes and pigments. It would be a shame to the good brothers of Buley if I could not, he answered, seeing that I have been their clerk this ten years back. The bowman looked at him with great respect. Think of that, said he, earned you with not a hair to your face and a skin like a girl. I can shoot three hundred and fifty paces with my little popper there, and four hundred and twenty with a great war bow, yet I can make nothing of this, nor read my own name if you were to set some alewood up against me. In the whole company there was only one man who could read, and he fell down a well at the taking of Ventador, which proves that the thing is not suited to a soldier, though most needful to a clerk. I can make some show at it, said Big John, though I was scarce long enough among the monks to catch the whole trick of it. Here, then, is something to drive on, quote the archer, pulling a square of parchment from the inside of his tunic. It was tied securely with a broad band of purple silk, and firmly sealed at either end with a large red seal. John poured long and earnestly over the inscription upon the back, with his brows bent as one who bears up against great mental strain. Not having read much of late, he said, I am loath to say too much about what this may be. Some may say one thing and some another, just as one bowman loves the ewe, and a second will not shoot save with the ash.