The White Company / Белый отряд. Книга для чтения на английском языке

Having stripped his robe, I had no choice but to let him have the wearing of my good leathern jerkin and hose, for, as he said, it was chilling to the blood and unseemly to the eye to stand frockless whilst I made my orisons. He had scarce got them on, and it was a sore labour, seeing that my inches will scarce match my girth – he had scarce got them on, I say, and I not yet at the end of the second psalm, when he bade me do honour to my new dress, and with that set off down the road as fast as feet would carry him. For myself, I could no more run than if I had been sewn in a sack; so here I sit, and here I am like to sit, before I set eyes upon my clothes again.

”

“Nay, friend, take it not so sadly,” said Alleyne, clapping the disconsolate one upon the shoulder. “Canst change thy robe for a jerkin once more at the Abbey, unless perchance you have a friend near at hand.”

“That have I,” he answered, “and close; but I care not to go nigh him in this plight, for his wife hath a gibing tongue, and would spread the tale until I could not show my face in any market from Fordingbridge to Southampton.

But if you, fair sir, out of your kind charity, would be pleased to go a matter of two bow-shots out of your way, you would do me such a service as I could scarce repay.”

“With all my heart,” said Alleyne readily.

“Then take this pathway on the left, I pray thee, and then the deer-track which passes on the right. You will then see under a great beech-tree the hut of a charcoal-burner.

Give him my name, good sir, the name of Peter the Puller, of Lymington, and ask him for a change of raiment, that I may pursue my journey without delay. There are reasons why he would be loth to refuse me.”

Alleyne started off along the path indicated, and soon found the log-hut where the burner dwelt. He was away faggot-cutting in the forest; but his wife, a ruddy, bustling dame, found the needful garments and tied them into a bundle. While she busied herself in finding and folding them Alleyne Edricson stood by the open door looking in at her with much interest and some distrust, for he had never been so nigh to a woman before.

She had round red arms, a dress of some sober woollen stuff, and a brass brooch the size of a cheesecake stuck in the front of it.

“Peter the Fuller!” she kept repeating. “Marry come up! if I were Peter the Fuller’s wife, I would teach him better than to give his clothes to the first knave who asks for them.