The Deserter, and Other Stories: A Book of Two Wars

"It is his Grace of Gloster – our good King's brother – who honors you with his princely favor."

Some archers bore in a bed of boughs at this, over which the Prince, still smiling, spread his own red cloak, jewelled collar and all. To another he gave the casket with the book.

"I keep my Christmas at the house of holy St. Bernard, down the valley," he said, as the men lifted Andreas gently into the litter, and folded the royal robe about his slender form. "Sobeit thou gainest strength there, in warm bed and cheerful care, shalt ride to London with me."

So, as he turned upon his heel, the torch-bearers spread themselves forth to light his way; and after him, with much rattling of iron, arms and armor, the knights and the men with the litter pushed their way.

Dickon stood by the declining fire, awed and struck dumb with what had come to pass. The brother of the King! They were bearing Andreas away, and he was left under the black winter sky with his crossbow and frozen boar and empty bottle, desolate and alone.

He stared stupidly at the dancing torch-lights on the armor of the passing group, with a dull ache in his breast.

Then suddenly he heard the shrill voice of Andreas crying, "Dickon! My Dickon!"

Dickon ran headlong forward, and stood boldly beside the litter, which for the moment was halted in its progress. When the Prince turned to look back, the smith's son faced even this mighty glance upright, and with his chin in the air. If the wrath of kings' brothers killed, then he would at least die beside Andreas.

"What to-do is this?" Richard of Gloster asked, with a bending of his brows upon the peasant lad.

The Prince had stopped, and with him all his cortège. Above him flickered in its final stage the last of the rush-lights on the tree. Now that he stood cloakless, one of his shoulders was revealed higher than the other.

"He saved my poor life, your Highness," spoke Andreas swiftly from his couch. "He came to Camber Dane along with the robber band, but in the pillage he bore no part, and with his own hands slew he two villains who would have run me down, and bore me through the forest here, and got food and drink and fire for me, and guarded my 'Troilus' there from loss and – "

"Whose man art thou, boy?" the Prince broke in.

"I was Sir Watty Curdle's man," Dickon made answer, with a stumbling tongue, but bold enough mien. "But that I will be no more, but rather die here first."

"Why, Sir Watty hath outstripped thee in that race. I set his head up on a pole in Craven market-place this morning, and Egswith hath the King's men in it to keep for once an honest Christmas," said the Prince, smiling grimly. "What name hast thou?"

"No other name save Dickon."

"Why, then, for all this doughty strife and brave work shalt have another atop of it," the Prince said, his shrewd, shapely young face melting into a kindly softness. "Art a good lad to be thus sued for."

He cast his swift glance about in instant search for some fit surname, and his eye caught the struggling taper-light upon the bough above him.

"Thou shalt be Dickon of the Tannenbaum," he called out, so that each might hear, "and wear my boar's head in exchange for that other thou didst slay, and hold thyself my man."

Then the torches moved on again, and behind them, in their dancing shadows through the wintry wood, the Prince and knights and litter passed; and Dickon followed to the highroad, where horses and five-score men-at-arms were waiting, and so to the abbey before ever midnight struck.

Seven years afterward, on bloody Bosworth field, when King Richard hewed his despairing way through the ring of steel which engirdled the pretender Richmond, and fell there dead, another Richard rode hotly at his heels, and like him was stricken to the earth.

But life was left in this second, and for the madness of his bravery it was spared. After he had lain a time in Leicester Abbey, to be cured of his wounds, he went to London, where Henry now was king instead. It was our Dickon.

The aged Master Caxton and Andreas Mayer, his right hand now, stood Dickon's friends at court, and it came in time to pass that he died Sir Richard Tannibow, for so the English tongue framed the strange foreign word Tannenbaum. Of the properties he left behind the chief was the domain of Egswith, where once he had been the lowliest of hinds.

In after ages the name of the family still further changed to Tambow; but it is not likely to undergo any further shortening. Though they do not hold Egswith now, and wear no title in these later times, the Tambows still bear upon their shield the fir tree and the candles, and rightfully hold their heads as high as any in all Shropshire.

WHERE AVON INTO SEVERN FLOWS

CHAPTER I.
HUGH THE WRITER

A boy of fifteen, clad in doublet and hose of plain cloth dyed a sober brown, sat alone at one end of a broad, vaulted room, before a writing table. The strong, clear light which covered him and his work fell through an open window, arched at the top and piercing a stone wall of almost a yard's thickness. Similar openings to the right and left of him marked with bars of light a dozen other places along the extended, shelf-like table, where writers had now finished their day's labor, and, departing, had left covered horns of ink and cleansed utensils behind them. But the boy's task lagged behind fulfilment, and mocked him.

Strive as he might, Hugh could not compel the tails of the longer letters to curl freely and with decent grace, or even to run in the same direction, one with the other. Though he pressed his elbow to the board, and scowled intently at the vellum before him, and even thrust out his tongue a little in earnest endeavor, still the marks went wrong. At last there came at the end of a word an "f," which needs must flow into shapely curves at top and bottom, if all fair writing were not to be shamed – and, lo! it did neither, but sloped off shakily into a rude angle above, a clumsy duck's egg below. Then he laid down his reed pen, and groaned aloud.

This Hugh Overtown, having later come to man's estate and then comfortably ripened into old age, has been dust and ashes now close upon four hundred years. For every minute in that huge stretch of time, some other boy since then has put aside his pen and groaned, because the stubborn letters would not come right. But not many of these have had such sound cause for vexation.

First of all, Hugh was a trained writer, who might look a little later to be actually paid for his toil, if so be he did not take the black habit and became a monk himself. All of their gentle craft that the master limners and letterers in this great scriptorium of Tewkesbury Abbey could teach him, he had learned. In all the ten major abbeys and priories of Gloucestershire, perhaps no other lad of his years was so skilled to use both brush and pen. His term of tutelage being passed, he wrought now, in repayment for his teaching, upon the choicest of the volumes written here for great nobles and patrons of art and letters. And if ever sureness of glance and touch was called for, it was at this present time, since the work must be meet for royal eyes. The volume – when all its soft, creamy leaves should have been covered with arabesques and high painted crests and shields and deftly regular text of writing, and been sewed together inside their embossed covers – was to be given, they said now, to the brother of the King. Prouder ambition than this a craftsman could hardly dream of – yet now, all at once, Hugh despaired to find himself making foolish mis-marks on the precious page, and not able to contrive their betterment.

The boy stared in gloom upon the parchment, wondering if, in truth, it were wholly spoilt; then his eyes wandered off through the open window to the blue May sky, and drifting after their gaze went his thoughts, in wistful reverie upon that gilded dreamland of princes and earls, whither this book, in good time, was to wend its way. New promptings stirred in his blood.

He had been a monk's boy in all these later years of peace, since his father, the poor saddler, fell in his Nevill livery on Hedgely Moor, away in the farthest north. The great kindly Abbey had been much more his home than the dark, squalid little house in the village below, where his widowed mother lived: here he had learned to write so that even the Abbot, John Strensham, lofty magnate and companion of princes though he was, had nodded smilingly over his work; here he had helped to serve the Mass in the grand Abbey church, with censer and bell, and felt his young mind enriched and uplifted by pious longings; here, too, he had dreamed into the likeness of veritable and detailed history his vision of the time when he should compose some wonderful chronicle, and win thanks from the great ones of the earth, and be known to all men as Hugh of Tewkesbury, whose book was to be prized above every other.

But now, after seven years wherein peaceful desires possessed plain men – lo! here was fighting in the land. And now of a sudden it seemed to Hugh that the writing of books, the quiet cloistral life, even the favor of the Abbot himself, were paltry things. An unaccustomed heat tingled in his veins at thought of what existence outside these thick walls might now once more signify. Who would be a stoop-shouldered scribe, a monk, or even a mass-priest when there were war harnesses to wear, horses to mount, yew bows to bend till the shaft trembled in the strain?

Hugh could almost believe that he heard the tramp and distant confused murmuring of an armed host, as his musing dream took form. The very pages lying before him spoke of this new outburst of war, and linked him to it. The book was one of heraldry, and it had been begun for the great Earl of Warwick. Both the fame and the person of this mighty captain were well-known to the lad, for the King-maker was lord of Tewkesbury, and the overshadowing patron of village and abbey alike. But when scarcely the first sheets had been written this puissant lord had fled the kingdom, and the cautious monks had laid the work aside. Later came strange rumors and tales: how Warwick had returned and driven the King away, and put up his whilom Red-rose foes to rule in London – and then pens and brushes were set busily at the book once more. But now the King had in turn come back and seized his own again, and slain Warwick on bloody Barnet field – and the frightened monks had bethought them to finish the book, with sundry emblazonings of the royal arms now ingeniously married to those of the Nevills, and make it a peace offering to Duke George of Clarence, who had wedded Warwick's daughter, and would be lord of Tewkesbury in his shoes.

The half-written page of vellum on the table seemed to Hugh a living part of all this stirring new romance of blood and spark-striking steel. Almost it made a soldier out of him to touch it. The characters engrossed thereon by his own hand danced before his eyes – waved in his daydream like the motto on some proud knight's banner being borne forward to battle.

Suddenly the boy sat upright. Beyond question there was an unwonted noise, as of tumult, coming through the casement from the village without. He could distinguish the clanking of iron harness and weapons, the trampling of hoofs; and now – once! twice! a trumpet blast, rising on the air above the dull, vague rumble which bespeaks the assembling of a throng. He sprang to his feet, with the thought to climb the embrasure and look forth – and then as swiftly sat down again and bent over his work; the Chief Scrivener of the Abbey had entered the chamber.

Brother Thomas came slowly to the table – a good, easy man, whose fat white fingers knew knife and spoon now in these latter days much oftener than brush or pen – and glanced idly over Hugh's shoulder at the pages. Then he lifted the unfinished one, held it in the light to peer more closely, and sniffed aloud. Next he put his hand under Hugh's chin, and raised the boy's blushing face up till their glances met.

"What palsied spiders'-tracks are these?" he asked, holding out the vellum. "Art ill, boy?"

The gentle irony in his master's tone touched Hugh's conscience. He shook his head, and hung it, and kept a sheepish silence.

Thomas tossed the sheet upon the table, and spoke with something more of sharpness. "It is the mummers that have led thy wits off morris-dancing," he said. "These May-day fooleries stretch themselves out now, each year more, until no time at all is left for honest work. This it is I noted in thee yesterday, and marvelled at – when thou hadst ruled the lines bordering the painted initial letter with effect to cut off holy St. Adhelm's ear. Thy head is filled with idle sports and frolics outside. Happen his Lordship shall put them down now, once for all!"

Hugh's red face turned redder still, and when he would have spoken, his tongue was tied in confusion. Brother Thomas had unwittingly drawn very near to the truth of an awkward thing, the burden of which lay heavily on the boy's mind. In the next room, hidden but indifferently, were the fanciful garments which he himself had painted for the village morris-dancers a month before. They had been returned in privacy to him, and he had weakly pledged himself to trick them out anew against their coming use at Whitsuntide. This guilty secret it was that had preyed upon his peace, and robbed his hand of its cunning, ever since the masking dresses had been brought to him on yester-morning.

In any other year, he might have spoken freely to his master of this matter. But as evil chance would have it, on this very May festival, now two days gone – when in their pleasant wont the youths and maidens of Tewkesbury rose before cockcrow, and hied them to the greenwood with music and the blowing of horns, to gather haythorn branches and dell-flowers, to bathe their faces in the May-dew for beauty's sake, to shoot at target with Robin Hood, and dance their fill about Maid Marian – who but Brother Thomas should pass on his return from matins at Deerhurst cell, nodding drowsily with each movement of his patient mule? Hugh recalled with a shudder how some wanton ne'er-do-well had from the bushes hurled a huge, soft swollen toadstool, which broke upon the good monk's astonished countenance, and scattered miserably inside his hood. It was small wonder that from this Brother Thomas conceived sour opinions of May-day sports, and now hinted darkly that the Abbot should make an end to them. But as it stood thus, Hugh dared not speak concerning the morris-dresses, and so had hidden them, and now was sorely troubled about it all.

It may be that here, upon the moment, he would have broken silence with his secret, well knowing how truly gentle a heart had Thomas. But at this the door was flung open, and there entered Brother Peter, his gaunt gray poll shaking with excitement, his claw-like hands held up as one amazed, his eyes aflame with eagerness.

"Know ye what is come upon us?" he called out breathlessly. "The foreign woman – save her Grace, she that was – or is – Queen Margaret, I mean – is at our gates, and with her the Lord Duke Somerset, and her son the Prince Edward, and the great Earl's daughter, our Lady Anne, and with them a mort of lords, and knights, and men-at-arms – running now over every highway and lane inside Tewkesbury and out, taking to themselves roughly whatever eye likes or belly craves – swearing by the Rood they will have the Abbey down about our ears if we deny them or food or drink!"

While Peter's vehement tongue hurled forth these tidings, the man Thomas went pale with sudden concern for the great treasures and peace of the house; the boy Hugh rose to his feet, all the miseries of May-day and morris-garments clean forgotten, and only the inspiriting ring of steel on steel in his ears.

"Oh! may I run and behold the brave sight?" he prayed aloud, but Thomas held forth a restraining hand for the moment, and Hugh, much chafing, heard what further Peter had to tell.

The Abbot, and with him the heads of the Chapter, had gone to the gates, and by parley had warded off incursion. The Abbey servants, threescore in number, were bearing forth meat and bread and ale to spread on the ham by the mill for the famished Lancastrians, who had in these thirty hours marched from Bristol by Gloucester, through forest and foul by-ways, with scarcely bite or sup, and now ravened like winter wolves. There were stories that King Edward, in pursuit, had covered ground even more swiftly, and now was this side of Cheltenham, in hot chase. With this dread foe at their tail, the Lancastrian lords dared not attempt to ford the Severn, and so Queen, Prince, Duke, and all were halted up above the village on the high Gaston fields, and there would on the morrow give battle to King Edward.

"Oh! woe the day!" groaned Thomas, whose heart was in peaceful things. "How shall we escape sack and pillage – our painted missals and fair written tomes, our jewelled images, our plate of parcel-gilt, and silver-gilt and white, the beryl candlesticks, the mitres, monstrances, rings, gloves – wist ye not how after Wakefield's victory the Queen's men broke open churches, and defiled altars, from York along to London town?"

"Hast but a poor stomach for war times, good Thomas!" said the lean and eager old Brother Sacristan, in a tone spiced with sneering. "Who talketh of Wakefield? Who hath promised victory to these ribald Devon louts? On the morrow, we shall see them cast off their coats to run the better. Our stout King Edward hath never lost fight or turned tail yet. Shall he begin now?"

The old monk had not forgotten the deep Yorkist devotion in which his hotter secular youth had been trained, and his eyes sparkled now at thought of how true a fighter King Edward really was. No such fire of remembrance burned within Thomas, who none the less accepted the proffered consolation.

"Of a certainty," he admitted, "the King hath won all his battles heretofore. Doubtless he hath the close favor of the saints. I mind me now of his piety – how that he would not be crowned on the day appointed, for that it was Childermas, and the Holy Innocents might not be thus affronted. Thus do wise and pious kings and men" – Thomas lifted his voice here, and glanced meaningly at Hugh – "win Heaven's smiles, and honor fitly the anniversaries of the year – not by dancing and mumming in the greenwood."

"I ween that in this game now forward, hard knocks will serve King Edward more than all his holiness, good Thomas," said Peter, who, coming to the Abbey late in life, brought some carnal wisdom along in his skull. "And this more – mark thou my words – when all is still again the Abbey will be the richer, not the poorer, for it all."

"How wilt thou make that good?" asked Thomas. "At best, this beef and ale must be at our cost – and the worst may more easily come to pass."

"Hast forgotten the funerals?" said Peter, dryly, with a significant nod towards the door beyond. Then, noting no gleam of comprehension on the faces of the others, he strode to this door, and threw it open. Within, in the half light, they could see through the narrow archway the dim outlines of rich banners standing piled against the walls, and candles heaped on chests of vestments, and velvet palls.

"How make it good?" cried the worldly Peter. "Where we have put pence into that room we shall draw forth rose-nobles. Know you not the King's charge to his fighting men, 'Kill the lords, but spare the commons!' By sundown of the morrow one may walk among dead knights round about like sheeps' carcasses on a murrain'd moor. The Gastons, if there the Queen holdeth her place till she be met, will turn to marshes with gentle blood. And where shall they be buried, but here, within the holy Abbey's walls? Then see what comes: item, for tolling the death-bells; item, for streaking-board and face-cloth; item, for so many sin-eaters, to be of our own servitors; item, for so much waste of funeral torches; item, for funeral sermons; item, for the hiring of palls; item, for hiring of garlands of wax and gum to hang over the graves; item, for masses and candles before the rood at month's mind; item – "

"Peace, greedy Peter!" broke in the artist Thomas; "wert thou bred for a gravedigger? His Lordship mislikes this funeral zeal of thine. When thy grumbling for that the great Earl came not here from Barnet for his burial reached the Abbot's ears, he spoke wrothfully concerning it."

"So would he not, when I had shown him the charges in my book for that same," retorted Peter. "For how lives an Abbey save by the death of generous and holy men and women? And was it not a foul thing that the great Earl – lord of this manor, patron of this Abbey – should not have profitably laid his bones here, where now for four hundred years lie all the lords of Tewkesbury, Fitz-Hamons, Clares, De Spensers, Beauchamps – but should be filched away to Berkshire to enrich those Austin friars instead? Thus is religion scandalized, Sir Scrivener!"

Thomas turned away at this, mistrusting his temper in further argument; and Hugh would gladly have followed him out of the room, but that Peter bent his steps toward the storage chamber beyond, where lay hidden those wretched morris trappings. Prudence counselled the lad to depart, and let discovery take care of itself; but anxiety held him back, and he went in at the heels of the Sacristan.

Old Peter sent a speculative eye shrewdly over the contents of the room, making a rough enumeration as he progressed, and offering comments aloud from time to time half to himself.

"Full seven dozen small candles," he muttered, "but scarce a score of torches. How should we be shamed if they brought us a great lord like Somerset! The moulds shall be filled overnight." Then he turned up the corner of a purple velvet pall, noting its frayed edge and tarnished gilt braid. "Time was," he grumbled, "when for this eight crowns was gladly paid in hire; alack, but two months since Dame Willowby cried out against me when I asked a paltry five, and buried her good man under that fustian with the linen edge instead. Ah, the impious times we are fallen upon! Yet, if so be the press to get buried is great enough, and they carry the lights well up in air, a lord might be content with it at ten crowns." Again he mused over the waxen wreaths heaped on the floor.

"There are half as many more on the rood screen that may come down, if it be deftly done, and go into hire again for better men. The townspeople will be too stirred with battle talk to miss them."

Suddenly he turned to Hugh, and raised his voice. "The Sub-Prior will not hearken to me. What we are richest in is banners – here, against the wall, are a dozen of the bravest in all Gloucester. Yet in what do they serve! – naught save those trivial processions of Rogation Week, where all is outlay and nothing income. If he did but drop the hint, the fashion would rise to hire them for funerals; yet when I urged this upon him he laughed me to scorn! I tell thee, boy, there is no true piety left in mankind!"

Hugh had listened with but dull ears, his mind wavering between thoughts of what was going forward outside, and fears lest Peter should push his inquiries within the chamber too far. Here he said: —

"Good brother, if I do help thee to-night with the moulds – and later with what else is needful – wilt thou go with me now forth to the street and view these strange new things? I have never yet seen an army, harnessed for fighting, close at hand. And if thou art with me, Thomas will not be vexed."

So the twain – the old monk full as eager as the lad to rub shoulders with men-at-arms – made their way through the corridors and cloister walks to the great western gate of the Abbey. They met no one either within the buildings or in these cool, open-air paths: the monks were at their prayers in the church, perhaps, or in the garden burying the Abbey's treasures.

But when the gate was reached – "Angels save us!" gasped good Peter; "if our walls win soundly through this next forty hours, commoners shall be buried with candles till Ascension Day for threepence. I vow it to Our Lady!"

Well might such as loved the Abbey feel their hearts sink at the sight! Upon the green before the gate, which sloped smoothly for an arrow's flight down to the mill pit on the Avon, swaggered or lounged at leisure full five hundred base-born archers and billmen, mired to the knees, unwashed and foul of aspect, with rusty chain coats or torn and blackened leathern jackets. Some wore upon their heads battered iron sallets; others had only hoods pulled forward to their brows, or even lying back upon their shoulders, but over each face hung tangled masses of thick hair, and on the cleanest chin sprouted a fortnight's beard.

These unkempt ruffians were for the most part swart of visage, as Devon and Cornishmen should be. They waited now idly upon the return of their lords from the great church in front. While their betters within prayed to the saints in heaven against the morrow's carnage, these fellows sauntered in groups on the green sward, or played at dice upon a cloak spread flat on earth, or wrestled in rough jest to further amaze the gaping natives. Many were already in their cups, yet still the servants of the Abbey were to be seen, in the waning sunlight, on the ham beyond, broaching new casks of ale. Ribald quips and drunken laughter filled the air. In the distance, close upon the entrance to the church itself, two soldiers had thrown a farmer to the ground, and one was stripping off his doublet while the other kicked him as he lay. From the direction of the mill there rose the scream of a woman – and no one heeded it.

The Sacristan and the boy cowered for a time in the shadow of the gateway, looking out with fearful eyes upon this unwonted scene. From their cover, they watched until the great ones began coming out from their prayers, and the idling men-at-arms were hurriedly gathered, each after his livery, to attend them. These billmen bore upon their breasts the cognizances of their masters, but so worn and defaced were many of these that all Hugh's heraldic lore could not cope with them. Thus they could but guess who this or that proud knight might be, as he passed with gilded armor rattling in every joint, and the squalid knot of soldiers tramping at his heels.

"But this – this is surely the three torteaux of the Courtenays," he whispered, nudging Peter. "And he who carries his casquetel in hand, with fair curls and head bent in thought – that would be John, the new Earl of Devon."

The two looked upon this fine, strong, goodly young nobleman, and read in the three crimson circles wrought upon the jerkins of his retainers a tale of stately long descent, of cousinship with kings, of crusades, tournaments, and centuries of gallant warfare – familiar and stirring then to every schooled mind in England.

"Ay – I mind him now," said Peter, peering eagerly forth. "I saw his brother, the Earl Thomas, led to the block at York, after Towton field – 'tis nine years sine. There was a witch who then foretold that those three ripe-red roundels of the Courtenays were blood spots from three brothers' hearts, and all should die under the axe."

A stranger's voice, close behind them, took up their talk.

"My father saw the second brother, Earl Henry, beheaded at Salisbury four years later – and men called then to mind this same bloody prophecy – to the end that the Lord John fled the realm. Look where he walks, with bowed head and face o'er-cast – a fateful man! Belike the axe's edge is whetted for him, even now."

He who spoke thus, with a shivering sigh to close his speech, was young and of slight form – clad from sole to crown in plain and dulled plate-harness. His uplifted visor framed a face of small features and soft lines, with saddened eyes. He had stepped aside into the gateway unnoted by the two, and stood now at the Sacristan's elbow, gazing forth as gloomily as ever affrighted monk might do.

Peter glanced him briefly over, and sniffed disdain.

"I know you not, young sir," he said, with curtness, "and offer no offence. But I have seen stout fighting in my time – and were you kin of mine, into to-morrow's battle you should not stir, with witches' babble sickening your thoughts, and dead men's bones in your eyes. Hearten yourself, I conjure you!"

That monk should bear himself thus masterfully toward warrior startled Hugh for the moment, until he recalled that old Peter had on occasion browbeaten even the Sub-Prior himself, and reflected that this Knight seemed very young.

The stranger made no reply, but kept his anxious gaze fastened upon the scene without. Then, with a sudden little shudder which rattled swiftly like an echo through his armor, he lifted his head upright, and tossed the end of his cloak across his shoulder.

"The streets are strange to me," he said proudly. "If you are so minded, walk with me upon them. No harm shall befall you!"

His beckoning hand summoned from the outer shadows two tall old men-at-arms, in bull's-hide jackets and bearing pikes.

"Fare ye close upon our heels, Wilkin and Ashman," the Knight commanded. The monk and scrivener-lad took instant counsel of glances, and without a word walked beside their new companion – forth from the calm haven of Mother Church into the rude turbulence of murderous civil war.

Pressing tight together, the five made their way across the green and into Church Street. To their left, above the black roofs of the Abbey mills, the sunset sky was glowing with laced bars of blood and sulphur, overhung by a pall of lead. Before them, the narrow street lay dark beneath the shadows of projecting roofs and swollen galleries.

Here, as in the other streets which they traversed, the houses were for the most part closed and lightless. Even in the market-place, where the Tolzey cross glimmered faintly in the waning daylight like an altar in some deserted unroofed church, the citizens gave no sign of life in their homes; movement enough was on foot all about them, but it was that of strangers. Knots of soldiers, some already with flaming torches, strode aimlessly up and down before the taverns and in the alleys, roaring forth camp songs, kicking at suspected doors, or brawling with such trembling inhabitants as they had unearthed. Amidst it all the Knight passed unquestioned, with head haughtily erect.