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

But he was always a poor, fond, silly creature, was Peter, though we are beholden to him for helping to bury our second son, Wat, who was a ’prentice to him at Lymington in the year of the Black Death[23 - in the year of the Black Death – (ист.) «черная смерть», чума в Европе 1348−1349 гг.]. But who are you, young sir?”

“I am a clerk on my road from Beaulieu to Minstead.”

“Aye, indeed! Hast been brought up at the Abbey then. I could read it from thy reddened cheek and downcast eye.

Hast learned from the monks, I trow, to fear a woman as thou wouldst a lazar-house. Out upon them, that they should dishonour their own mothers by such teaching! A pretty world it would be with all the women out of it.”

“Heaven forefend that such a thing should come to pass!” said Alleyne.

“Amen and amen! But thou art a pretty lad, and the prettier for thy modest ways. It is easy to see from thy cheek that thou hast not spent thy days in the rain and the heat and the wind, as my poor Wat hath been forced to do.

”

“I have indeed seen little of life, good dame.”

“Wilt find nothing in it to pay thee for the loss of thy own freshness. Here are the clothes, and Peter can leave them when next he comes this way. Holy Virgin! see the dust upon thy doublet. It were easy to see that there is no woman to tend to thee. So! – that is better. Now buss me, boy.”

Alleyne stooped and kissed her, for the kiss was the common salutation of the age, and, as Erasmus[24 - Erasmus – Эразм Роттердамский (1469−1536), гуманист эпохи Возрождения] long afterwards remarked, more used in England than in any other country.

Yet it sent the blood to his temples again, and he wondered, as he turned away, what the Abbot Berghersh would have answered to so frank an invitation. He was still tingling from this new experience when he came out upon the high road and saw a sight which drove all other thoughts from his mind.

Some way down from where he had left him the unfortunate Peter was stamping and raving tenfold worse than before. Now, however, instead of the great white cloak, he had no clothes on at all, save a short woollen shirt and a pair of leather shoes. Far down the road a long-legged figure was running, with a bundle under one arm and the other hand to his side, like a man who laughs until he is sore.

“See him!” yelled Peter. “Look to him! You shall be my witness.