Part 13 (2/2)

”Bless the work!” exclaimed Grim. ”These Normans have a knack of drawing to themselves the wealth that should be ours. There should be pickings, eh? for all true Englishmen!” He nudged Kenric, and whispered:

”H'st! see where Richard comes!”

Richard the Norman came up to his cattle-pen. He was a small man, slightly built, and of upright carriage, and he moved with a spring in his gait. He had an aquiline nose, a persistent chin, and a strong, exceedingly well-formed mouth; his eyes were dark and deeply-set beneath the fine straight line of brow, and they looked straight into the eyes of others. His face was clean-shaven like a cleric's, and more than ordinarily wrinkled about mouth, eyes, and brow for his age, which was a little over thirty; the black hair of his head was cut short at the nape of the neck and the top of the forehead. He wore a short tunic of dull-coloured cloth, and leather boots, and from his waistbelt hung a small, shabby leather bag. Behind him walked his two servants, Howel the Welshman, and his own countryman Perot.

”Good day, Thane Kenric,” said Richard the Scrob. ”Good day, lords both, and to you, wors.h.i.+pful Munulf.”

”Ah! Good day, Richard Scrob's son.”

”Warm weather for November. A very Martin's summer,” said Richard.

”Aye,” from Grim. ”Oh, aye, right warm, this weather. It may become hot. It shall soon be hot for all Frenchmen!” he concluded savagely.

Richard seemed unconscious of Grim's words and of their tone. He unfastened the bag from his belt, opened it, and surveyed the contents complacently. Oswin, the maltman's son, a weak-kneed, loose-lipped youth, gave a laboured imitation of the Norman's air of detachment, a few yards away.

”Why, son,” said Munulf, when he had finished guffawing at this specimen of his offspring's wit, ”what bearest in thy bosom?” pointing to the opening at the neck of the lad's jerkin, where a small, dark head was seen to writhe.

”Oh, it is my weasel,” Oswin replied. ”He harms me not, for I feed him, but others he biteth. There are some shall feel his fangs before Holy Martin's fair is out, I warrant you, my father!”

”Here are the Moor folk at last. I shall sit down,” Kenric announced portentously. He withdrew to the customary resort of thanes and great men on market-days, on holidays, and at all public functions held upon Ludford green--the huge elm whose boughs cast their shadow as far as the cattle-pen of Richard the Scrob. There he subsided upon a bench, and sent a serving-woman of the ale-wife's for beer.

The green was now crowded with buyers and sellers of every degree. Grim and Munulf, who leant upon the hurdles surrounding Richard's exhibits, saw the throng before them part to release a procession of two thralls, four lean oxen, four women in riding-mantles, and three corpulent men who wore the grimy remains of once-fine garments, and had pretentiously heavy gold ornaments at their necks and about their wrists and fingers.

Three of the women were comely and commonplace: the pleasant person of the fourth could not have failed to command attention in any surroundings. She was young, of moderate height, and generously built; she was small-featured, white skinned, blue-eyed, and her lips were full and wholesomely red. Over her head and the greater part of her figure was a hooded cloak, evidently new, of periwinkle-blue cloth; and upon her breast lay her hair in long plaits of that soft shade which is not golden, nor brown, nor chestnut, but all three, and has yet an ashen-silver haze upon its surface when the sun s.h.i.+nes behind it. Her gown was black, and much the worse for wear, and at the base of her throat gleamed a bunch of the spindle-tree's pink berries, fastened in place with a silver pin.

”Good day, or else good morrow, Ulwin,” said Grim, scarcely attempting to veil the sneer in his voice. ”Ye are late with your stock.”

”Late--aye!” panted the eldest, fattest, most showily-dressed of the newly arrived men. ”Aye--late! All for women--hindered by women! I ask you, fellows, what should women do at fair or market, if they bring not wares to sell? Squander good money! Bedizen themselves to the nines!

Would G.o.d that I had let thee from coming forth in thy prideful gear!”

he snarled at her of the blue mantle. ”Did I not say that thou wouldst seem no better than a tumbling-girl in the eyes of the folk? Dost thou mind that my brother lies in his grave?”

Richard the Scrob's right hand closed upon the hurdle in a convulsive grasp.

”It is five years since he died,” said the woman.

”Get behind me, and stay behind me, out of our way,” said Ulwin. ”See here, Alftrude, thou shalt not stir whence I now bid thee stand. I will not have thee waste our goods on womanish nothings. Geegaws and sweet foodstuffs, forsooth! What lacks the woman? Will she tell the world that we clothe her not nor board her?”

She made no reply. For a moment she looked him full in the face: there was no reproach in her gaze, but only contempt and a spice of derision; then she turned and walked calmly, with unflushed cheeks, to join the other women in the background, and stood with them. The market-crowd surged all about them.

”These are thine?” growled Ulwin to Richard, indicating the penned oxen.

”Mine they were,” answered Richard. ”I sold them to Edmund the flesher of Worcester this morning, when the fair was but new-begun. But I have others, Ulwin Ednoth's son, if ye wish to buy.”

”Buy! Pah! no, not I! It is not of buying that I have to speak with thee, Richard.”

”Of what then, worthy thane?”

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