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

“But it is to the grosser feelings that we must turn in such natures as thine, and as thou art no longer under the shield of holy Church there is the less difficulty. Ho there! lay-brothers – Francis, Naomi, Joseph – seize him and bind his arms! Drag him forth, and let the foresters and the porters scourge him from the precincts!”

As these three brothers advanced towards him to carry out the Abbot’s direction the smile faded from the novice’s face, and he glanced right and left with his fierce brown eyes, like a bull at a baiting.

Then, with a sudden deep-chested shout, he tore up the heavy oaken prie-Dieu, and poised it to strike, taking two steps backward the while, that none might take him at a vantage[15 - that none might take him at a vantage – (уст.) чтобы никто не застал его врасплох].

“By the black rood of Waltham!” he roared, “if any knave among you lays a finger-end upon the edge of my gown, I will crush his skull like a filbert!” With his thick knotted arms, his thundering voice, and his bristle of red hair, there was something so repellent in the man that the three brothers flew back at the very glare of him; and the two rows of white monks strained away from him like poplars in a tempest.

The Abbot only sprang forward with shining eyes; but the chancellor and the master hung upon either arm and wrested him back out of danger’s way.

“He is possessed of a devil!” they shouted. “Run, brother Ambrose, brother Joachim! Call Hugh of the Mill, and Woodman Wat, and Raoul with his arbalest and bolts.

Tell them that we are in fear of our lives! Run, run! for the love of the Virgin!”

But the novice was a strategist as well as a man of action. Springing forward, he hurled his unwieldy weapon at brother Ambrose, and, as desk and monk clattered on to the floor together, he sprang through the open door and down the winding stair. Sleepy old brother Athanasius, at the porter’s cell, had a fleeting vision of twinkling feet and flying skirts; but before he had time to rub his eyes the recreant had passed the lodge, and was speeding as fast as his sandals could patter along the Lyndhurst road.

Chapter II

How Alleyne Edricson Came out into the World

Never had the peaceful atmosphere of the old Cistercian house been so rudely ruffled. Never had there been insurrection so sudden, so short, and so successful.