Page:A C Doyle - The White Company.djvu/88

62 heartier and less grudging than any which he had ever heard from the critical brother Jerome ot 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 Hordle 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, mon camarade,' said the soldier, as he heaped a slice of the fish upon Alleyne's tranchoir of bread, 'that you could read written things, since you are so ready with your brushes and pigments.'

'It would be shame to the good brothers of Beaulieu 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. 'And 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 the great war-bow; yet I can make nothing of this, nor read my own name if you were to set "Sam Aylward" 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 Ventadour, 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 try upon,' quoth 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 pored 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 loth to say