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

Ha! he may wake some black night to find the flames licking about his ears – for fire is a good friend to the poor man, and I have seen a smoking heap of ashes where overnight there stood just such another castlewick as Ashby.”

“This is a lad of metal!” shouted another of the labourers. “He dares to give tongue to what all men think. Are we not all from Adam’s loins, all with flesh and blood, and with the same mouth that must needs have food and drink? Where all this difference, then, between the ermine cloak and the leathern tunic, if what they cover is the same?”

“Aye, Jenkin,” said another, “our foeman is under the stole and the vestment as much as under the helmet and plate of proof.

We have as much to fear from the tonsure as from the hauberk. Strike at the noble and the priest shrieks, strike at the priest and the noble lays his hand upon glaive[41 - glaive – (фр.) меч]. They are twin thieves who live upon our labour.”

“It would take a clever man to live upon thy labour, Hugh,” remarked one of the foresters, “seeing that the half of thy time is spent in swilling mead at the �Pied Merlin.

’”

“Better that than stealing the deer that thou art placed to guard, like some folk I know.”

“If you dare open that swine’s mouth against me,” shouted the woodman, “I’ll crop your ears for you before the hangman has the doing of it, thou long-jawed lackbrain.”

“Nay, gentles, gentles!” cried Dame Eliza, in a singsong, heedless voice, which showed that such bickerings were nightly things among her guests.

“No brawling or brabbling, gentles! Take heed to the good name of the house.”

“Besides, if it comes to the cropping of ears, there are other folk who may say their say,” quoth the third labourer. “We are all freemen, and I trow that a yeoman’s cudgel is as good as a forester’s knife. By St. Anselm! it would be an evil day if we had to bend to our masters’ servants as well as to our masters.

”

“No man is my master save the king,” the woodman answered. “Who is there, save a false traitor, who would refuse to serve the English king?”

“I know not about the English king,” said the man Jenkin. “What sort of English king is it who cannot lay his tongue to a word of English? You mind last year when he came down to Malwood, with his inner marshal and his outer marshal, his justiciar, his seneschal, and his four-and-twenty guardsmen.