Maid Marian by Thomas Love Peacock (large screen ebook reader txt) 📗
- Author: Thomas Love Peacock
Book online «Maid Marian by Thomas Love Peacock (large screen ebook reader txt) 📗». Author Thomas Love Peacock
The casements began to rattle in the wind, and the rain to beat upon the windows. The wind swelled to a hurricane, and the rain dashed like a flood against the glass. The boy retired to his little bed, the wife trimmed the lamp, the husband heaped logs upon the fire: Robin broached another flask; and Marian filled the baron’s cup, and sweetened Robin’s by touching its edge with her lips.
“Well,” said the baron, “give me a roof over my head, be it never so humble. Your greenwood canopy is pretty and pleasant in sunshine; but if I were doomed to live under it, I should wish it were water-tight.”
“But,” said Robin, “we have tents and caves for foul weather, good store of wine and venison, and fuel in abundance.”
“Ay, but,” said the baron, “I like to pull off my boots of a night, which you foresters seldom do, and to ensconce myself thereafter in a comfortable bed. Your beech-root is over-hard for a couch, and your mossy stump is somewhat rough for a bolster.”
“Had you not dry leaves,” said Robin, “with a bishop’s surplice over them? What would you have softer? And had you not an abbot’s travelling cloak for a coverlet? What would you have warmer?”
“Very true,” said the baron, “but that was an indulgence to a guest, and I dreamed all night of the sheriff of Nottingham. I like to feel myself safe,” he added, stretching out his legs to the fire, and throwing himself back in his chair with the air of a man determined to be comfortable. “I like to feel myself safe,” said the baron.
At that moment the woman caught her husband’s arm, and all the party following the direction of her eyes, looked simultaneously to the window, where they had just time to catch a glimpse of an apparition of an armed head, with its plumage tossing in the storm, on which the light shone from within, and which disappeared immediately.
CHAPTER XV O knight, thou lack’st a cup of canary. When did I see thee so put down?—Twelfth Night.
Several knocks, as from the knuckles of an iron glove, were given to the door of the cottage, and a voice was heard entreating shelter from the storm for a traveller who had lost his way. Robin arose and went to the door.
“What are you?” said Robin.
“A soldier,” replied the voice: “an unfortunate adherent of Longchamp, flying the vengeance of Prince John.”
“Are you alone?” said Robin.
“Yes,” said the voice: “it is a dreadful night. Hospitable cottagers, pray give me admittance. I would not have asked it but for the storm. I would have kept my watch in the woods.”
“That I believe,” said Robin. “You did not reckon on the storm when you turned into this pass. Do you know there are rogues this way?”
“I do,” said the voice.
“So do I,” said Robin.
A pause ensued, during which Robin listening attentively caught a faint sound of whispering.
“You are not alone,” said Robin. “Who are your companions?”
“None but the wind and the water,” said the voice, “and I would I had them not.”
“The wind and the water have many voices,” said Robin, “but I never before heard them say, What shall we do?”
Another pause ensued: after which,
“Look ye, master cottager,” said the voice, in an altered tone, “if you do not let us in willingly, we will break down the door.”
“Ho! ho!” roared the baron, “you are become plural are you, rascals? How many are there of you, thieves? What, I warrant, you thought to rob and murder a poor harmless cottager and his wife, and did not dream of a garrison? You looked for no weapon of opposition but spit, poker, and basting ladle, wielded by unskilful hands: but, rascals, here is short sword and long cudgel in hands well tried in war, wherewith you shall be drilled into cullenders and beaten into mummy.”
No reply was made, but furious strokes from without resounded upon the door. Robin, Marian, and the baron threw by their pilgrim’s attire, and stood in arms on the defensive. They were provided with swords, and the cottager gave them bucklers and helmets, for all Robin’s haunts were furnished with secret armouries. But they kept their swords sheathed, and the baron wielded a ponderous spear, which he pointed towards the door ready to run through the first that should enter, and Robin and Marian each held a bow with the arrow drawn to its head and pointed in the same direction. The cottager flourished a strong cudgel (a weapon in the use of which he prided himself on being particularly expert), and the wife seized the spit from the fireplace, and held it as she saw the baron hold his spear. The storm of wind and rain continued to beat on the roof and the casement, and the storm of blows to resound upon the door, which at length gave way with a violent crash, and a cluster of armed men appeared without, seemingly not less than twelve. Behind them rolled the stream now changed from a gentle and shallow river to a mighty and impetuous torrent, roaring in waves of yellow foam, partially reddened by the light that streamed through the open door, and turning up its convulsed surface in flashes of shifting radiance from restless masses of half-visible shadow. The stepping-stones, by which the intruders must have crossed, were buried under the waters. On the opposite bank the light fell on the stems and boughs of the rock-rooted oak and ash tossing and swaying in the blast, and sweeping the flashing spray with their leaves.
The instant the door broke, Robin and Marian loosed their arrows. Robin’s arrow struck one of the assailants in the juncture of the shoulder, and disabled his right arm: Marian’s struck a second in the juncture of the knee, and rendered him unserviceable; for the night. The baron’s long spear struck on the mailed breastplate of a third, and being stretched to its full extent by the long-armed hero, drove him to the edge of the torrent, and plunged him into its eddies, along which he was whirled down the darkness of the descending stream, calling vainly on his comrades for aid, till his voice was lost in the mingled roar of the waters and the wind. A fourth springing through the door was laid prostrate by the cottager’s cudgel: but the wife being less dexterous than her company, though an Amazon in strength, missed her pass at a fifth, and drove the point of the spit several inches into the right hand door-post as she stood close to the left, and thus made a new barrier which the invaders could not pass without dipping under it and submitting their necks to the sword: but one of the assailants seizing it with gigantic rage, shook it at once from the grasp of its holder and from its lodgment in the post, and at the same time made good the irruption of
Comments (0)