The House of Walderne Part 16

"But what do the outsiders call you?"

"Saint Dymas' Halt, since we never pay our debts. But the world calls it Le Oriole {17} Hostel. A better name just now is 'Liberty Hall,' for we all do just as we like. There is no king in Israel."

So speaking, he lifted the latch, and saluted a gigantic porter:

"Holloa, Magog! hast thou digested the Woodstock deer yet?"

"Not so loud, my young sir. We may be heard." He paused, but put his hand knowingly to the neck just under the left ear.

"Pshaw, he that is born to die in his bed can never be hanged.

Where is Spitfire?"

"Here," said a sharp-speaking voice, coming from a precocious young monkey in a servitor's dress.

"Get me a flagon of canary, and we will wash down the remains of the pasty."

"But strangers are not admitted after curfew," said the porter.

"And I must be getting to my lodgings," said Martin.

"Tush, tush, didn't you hear that this is Liberty Hall?

"Shut your mouth, Magog--here is something to stop it. This young warrior just knocked down a bos borealis, who strove to break my head. Shall I not offer him bread and salt in return?"

The porter offered no further opposition, for the speaker slipped a coin into his palm as he continued:

"Come this way, this is my den. Not that way, that is spelunca latronum, a den of robbers."

"Holloa! here is Ralph de Monceux, and with a broken head, as usual.

"Where didst thou get that, Master Ralph, roaring Ralph?"

Such sounds came from the spelunca latronum."

"At the Quatre Voies, fighting for your honour against a drove of northern oxen."

"And whom hast thou brought with thee to help thee mend it?"

"The fellow who knocked down the bos who gave it me, as deftly as any butcher."

"Let us see him."

"What name shall I give thee?" whispered Ralph.

"Martin."

"Martin of--?"

"Martin from Kenilworth," said our bashful hero, blus.h.i.+ng.

"Thou didst say thou wert of Suss.e.x?"

"So I am, but I was adopted into the earl's household three years agone."

"Then he is Northern," said a listener.

"No, he came from Suss.e.x."

"Say where? no tricks upon gentlemen."

"Michelham Priory."

"Michelham Priory. Ah! an acolyte! Tapers, incense, and albs."

"Acolyte be hanged. He does not fight like one at all events."

"Come up into my den.

"Come, Hugh, Percy, Aylmer, Richard, Roger, and we will discuss the matter deftly over a flagon of canary with eke a flask or two of sack, in honour of our new acquaintance."

"Nay," said Martin, "now I have seen you safe home, I must go. It is past curfew. I am a stranger, and should be at my lodgings."

"We will see thee safely home, and improve the occasion by cracking a few more bovine skulls if we meet them, the northern burring brutes. Their lingo sickens me, but here we are."

So speaking, he opened the door of the vaulted chamber he called his "den." It was sparingly furnished, and bore no likeness to the sort of smoking divan an undergrad of the tone of Ralph would affect now in Oxford. Plain stove, floor strewn with rushes, rude tapestry around the walls, with those uncouth faces and figures worked thereon which give antiquarians a low idea of the personal appearance of the people of the day, a solid table, upon which a bear might dance without breaking it, two or three stools, a carved cabinet, a rude hearth and chimney piece, a rough basin and ewer of red ware in deal setting, a pallet bed in a recess.

And the students, the undergraduates of the period, were worth studying. One had a black eye, another a plastered head, a third an arm in a sling, a fourth a broken nose. Martin stared at them in amazement.

"We had a tremendous fight here last night. The Northerners besieged us in our hostel. We made a sally and levelled a few of the burring brutes before the town guard came up and spoiled the fun. What a pity we can't fight like gentlemen with swords and battle axes!"

"Why not, if you must fight at all?" said Martin, who had been taught at Kenilworth to regard fists and cudgels as the weapons of clowns.

"Because, young greenhorn," said Hugh, "he who should bring a sword or other lethal weapon into the University would shortly be expelled by alma mater from her nursery, according to the statutes for that case made and provided."

"But why do you come here, if you love fighting better than learning? There is plenty of fighting in the world."

"Some come because they are made to come, others from a vocation for the church, like thyself perhaps, others from an inexplicable love of books; you should hear us when our professor Asinus Asinorum takes us in cla.s.s.

"Amo, amas, amat, see me catch a rat. Rego, regis, regit, let me sweat a bit."

"Tace, no more Latin till tomorrow. Here is a venison pasty from a Woodstock deer, smuggled into the town beneath a load of hay, under the very noses of the watch."

"Who shot it?"

"Mad Hugh and I."

"Where did you get the load of hay from?"