"I have
seen him with these two eyes in a stricken field, and never did
man carry himself better. Mon Dieu! yes, ye would not credit it
to look at him, or to hearken to his soft voice, but from the
sailing from Orwell down to the foray to Paris, and that is clear
twenty years, there was not a skirmish, onfall, sally, bushment,
escalado or battle, but Sir Nigel was in the heart of it. I go
now to Christchurch with a letter to him from Sir Claude Latour
to ask him if he will take the place of Sir John Hawkwood; and
there is the more chance that he will if I bring one or two
likely men at my heels. What say you, woodman: wilt leave the
bucks to loose a shaft at a nobler mark?"
The forester shook his head. "I have wife and child at Emery
Down," quoth he; "I would not leave them for such a venture."
"You, then, young sir?" asked the archer.
"Nay, I am a man of peace," said Alleyne Edricson. "Besides, I
have other work to do."
"Peste!" growled the soldier, striking his flagon on the board
until the dishes danced again. "What, in the name of the devil,
hath come over the folk? Why sit ye all moping by the fireside,
like crows round a dead horse, when there is man's work to be
done within a few short leagues of ye? Out upon you all, as a
set of laggards and hang-backs! By my hilt I believe that the
men of England are all in France already, and that what is left
behind are in sooth the women dressed up in their paltocks and
hosen.
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