CHAPTER XIV
As ye came from the holy land Of blessed Walsinghame, Oh met ye not with my true love, As by the way ye came?
--Old Ballad.
In pursuance of the arrangement recorded in the twelfth chapter, thebaron, Robin, and Marian disguised themselves as pilgrims returned fromPalestine, and travelling from the sea-coast of Hampshire to their homein Northumberland. By dint of staff and cockle-shell, sandal and scrip,they proceeded in safety the greater part of the way (for Robin had manysly inns and resting-places between Barnsdale and Sherwood), and werealready on the borders of Yorkshire, when, one evening, they passedwithin view of a castle, where they saw a lady standing on a turret,and surveying the whole extent of the valley through which they werepassing. A servant came running from the castle, and delivered to thema message from his lady, who was sick with expectation of news from herlord in the Holy Land, and entreated them to come to her, that she mightquestion them concerning him. This was an awkward occurrence: but therewas no presence for refusal, and they followed the servant into thecastle. The baron, who had been in Palestine in his youth, undertook tobe spokesman on the occasion, and to relate his own adventures tothe lady as having happened to the lord in question. This preparationenabled him to be so minute and circumstantial in his detail, and socoherent in his replies to her questions, that the lady fell implicitlyinto the delusion, and was delighted to find that her lord was alive andin health, and in high favour with the king, and performing prodigiesof valour in the name of his lady, whose miniature he always wore in hisbosom. The baron guessed at this circumstance from the customs of thatage, and happened to be in the right.
"This miniature," added the baron, "I have had the felicity to see, andshould have known you by it among a million." The baron was a littleembarrassed by some questions of the lady concerning her lord's personalappearance; but Robin came to his aid, observing a picture suspendedopposite to him on the wall, which he made a bold conjecture to be thatof the lord in question; and making a calculation of the influences oftime and war, which he weighed with a comparison of the lady's age,he gave a description of her lord sufficiently like the picture in itsgroundwork to be a true resemblance, and sufficiently differing fromit in circumstances to be more an original than a copy. The lady wascompletely deceived, and entreated them to partake her hospitality forthe night; but this they deemed it prudent to decline, and with manyhumble thanks for her kindness, and representations of the necessity ofnot delaying their homeward course, they proceeded on their way.
As they passed over the drawbridge, they met Sir Ralph Montfaucon andhis squire, who were wandering in quest of Marian, and were enteringto claim that hospitality which the pilgrims had declined. Theircountenances struck Sir Ralph with a kind of imperfect recognition,which would never have been matured, but that the eyes of Marian, asshe passed him, encountered his, and the images of those stars of beautycontinued involuntarily twinkling in his sensorium to the exclusion ofall other ideas, till memory, love, and hope concurred with imaginationto furnish a probable reason for their haunting him so pertinaciously.Those eyes, he thought, were certainly the eyes of Matilda Fitzwater;and if the eyes were hers, it was extremely probable, if not logicallyconsecutive, that the rest of the body they belonged to was hers also.Now, if it were really Matilda Fitzwater, who were her two companions?The baron? Aye, and the elder pilgrim was something like him. And theearl of Huntingdon? Very probably. The earl and the baron might be goodfriends again, now that they were both in disgrace together. While hewas revolving these cogitations, he was introduced to the lady, andafter claiming and receiving the promise of hospitality, he inquiredwhat she knew of the pilgrims who had just departed? The lady told himthey were newly returned from Palestine, having been long in the HolyLand. The knight expressed some scepticism on this point. The ladyreplied, that they had given her so minute a detail of her lord'sproceedings, and so accurate a description of his person, that she couldnot be deceived in them. This staggered the knight's confidence inhis own penetration; and if it had not been a heresy in knighthood tosuppose for a moment that there could be in rerum natura such anotherpair of eyes as those of his mistress, he would have acquiescedimplicitly in the lady's judgment. But while the lady and the knightwere conversing, the warder blew his bugle-horn, and presently entereda confidential messenger from Palestine, who gave her to understandthat her lord was well; but entered into a detail of his adventuresmost completely at variance with the baron's narrative, to which notthe correspondence of a single incident gave the remotest colouring ofsimilarity. It now became manifest that the pilgrims were not truemen; and Sir Ralph Montfaucon sate down to supper with his head fullof cogitations, which we shall leave him to chew and digest with hispheasant and canary.
Meanwhile our three pilgrims proceeded on their way. The evening set inblack and lowering, when Robin turned aside from the main track, to seekan asylum for the night, along a narrow way that led between rocky andwoody hills. A peasant observed the pilgrims as they entered that narrowpass, and called after them: "Whither go you, my masters? there arerogues in that direction."
"Can you show us a direction," said Robin, "in which there are none? Ifso we will take it in preference." The peasant grinned, and walked awaywhistling.
The pass widened as they advanced, and the woods grew thicker and darkeraround them. Their path wound along the slope of a woody declivity,which rose high above them in a thick rampart of foliage, and descendedalmost precipitously to the bed of a small river, which they hearddashing in its rocky channel, and saw its white foam gleaming atintervals in the last faint glimmerings of twilight. In a short time allwas dark, and the rising voice of the wind foretold a coming storm. Theyturned a point of the valley, and saw a light below them in the depthof the hollow, shining through a cottage-casement and dancing in itsreflection on the restless stream. Robin blew his horn, which wasanswered from below. The cottage door opened: a boy came forth with atorch, ascended the steep, showed tokens of great delight at meetingwith Robin, and lighted them down a flight of steps rudely cut in therock, and over a series of rugged stepping-stones, that crossedthe channel of the river. They entered the cottage, which exhibitedneatness, comfort, and plenty, being amply enriched with pots, pans,and pipkins, and adorned with flitches of bacon and sundry similarornaments, that gave goodly promise in the firelight that gleamed uponthe rafters. A woman, who seemed just old enough to be the boy's mother,had thrown down her spinning wheel in her joy at the sound of Robin'shorn, and was bustling with singular alacrity to set forth her festalware and prepare an abundant supper. Her features, though not beautiful,were agreeable and expressive, and were now lighted up with suchmanifest joy at the sight of Robin, that Marian could not help feeling amomentary touch of jealousy, and a half-formed suspicion that Robin hadbroken his forest law, and had occasionally gone out of bounds, as othergreat men have done upon occasion, in order to reconcile the breachof the spirit, with the preservation of the letter, of their ownlegislation. However, this suspicion, if it could be said to exist in amind so generous as Marian's, was very soon dissipated by the entranceof the woman's husband, who testified as much joy as his wife had doneat the sight of Robin; and in a short time the whole of the party wereamicably seated round a smoking supper of river-fish and wild wood fowl,on which the baron fell with as much alacrity as if he had been a truepilgrim from Palestine.
The husband produced some recondite flasks of wine, which were laid byin a binn consecrated to Robin, whose occasional visits to them in hiswanderings were the festal days of these warm-hearted cottagers, whosemanners showed that they had not been born to this low estate. Theirstory had no mystery, and Marian easily collected it from the tenour oftheir conversation. The young man had been, like Robin, the victim of anusurious abbot, and had been outlawed for debt, and his nut-brown maidhad accompanied him to the depths of Sherwood, where they lived anunholy and illegitimate life, killing the king's deer, and never hearingmass. In this state,
Robin, then earl of Huntingdon, discovered themin one of his huntings, and gave them aid and protection. When Robinhimself became an outlaw, the necessary qualification or gift ofcontinency was too hard a law for our lovers to subscribe to; andas they were thus disqualified for foresters, Robin had found them aretreat in this romantic and secluded spot. He had done similar serviceto other lovers similarly circumstanced, and had disposed them invarious wild scenes which he and his men had discovered in theirflittings from place to place, supplying them with all necessaries andcomforts from the reluctant disgorgings of fat abbots and usurers. Thebenefit was in some measure mutual; for these cottages served him asresting-places in his removals, and enabled him to travel untraced andunmolested; and in the delight with which he was always received hefound himself even more welcome than he would have been at an inn;and this is saying very much for gratitude and affection together.The smiles which surrounded him were of his own creation, and heparticipated in the happiness he had bestowed.
The casements began to rattle in the wind, and the rain to beat uponthe windows. The wind swelled to a hurricane, and the rain dashed likea flood against the glass. The boy retired to his little bed, the wifetrimmed the lamp, the husband heaped logs upon the fire: Robin broachedanother flask; and Marian filled the baron's cup, and sweetened Robin'sby touching its edge with her lips.
"Well," said the baron, "give me a roof over my head, be it never sohumble. Your greenwood canopy is pretty and pleasant in sunshine; but ifI were doomed to live under it, I should wish it were water-tight."
"But," said Robin, "we have tents and caves for foul weather, good storeof wine and venison, and fuel in abundance."
"Ay, but," said the baron, "I like to pull off my boots of a night,which you foresters seldom do, and to ensconce myself thereafter ina comfortable bed. Your beech-root is over-hard for a couch, and yourmossy stump is somewhat rough for a bolster."
"Had you not dry leaves," said Robin, "with a bishop's surplice overthem? What would you have softer? And had you not an abbot's travellingcloak for a coverlet? What would you have warmer?"
"Very true," said the baron, "but that was an indulgence to a guest, andI dreamed all night of the sheriff of Nottingham. I like to feel myselfsafe," he added, stretching out his legs to the fire, and throwinghimself back in his chair with the air of a man determined to becomfortable. "I like to feel myself safe," said the baron.
At that moment the woman caught her husband's arm, and all the partyfollowing the direction of her eyes, looked simultaneously to thewindow, where they had just time to catch a glimpse of an apparition ofan armed head, with its plumage tossing in the storm, on which the lightshone from within, and which disappeared immediately.
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