“And a captain shall be found!” cried Robin. “Are we so poor in valour, that when one man leaves us we are headless and undone? What if Warwick so betray us and himself,—he brings no forces. And never, by God’s blessing, should we separate till we have redressed the wrongs of our countrymen!”
“Good!” said the Saxon squire, winking, and looking wise,—“not till we have burned to the ground the Baron of Bullstock’s castle!”
“Not,” said a Lollard, sternly, “till we have shortened the purple gown of the churchman; not till abbot and bishop have felt on their backs the whip wherewith they have scourged the godly believer and the humble saint.”
“Not,” added Robin, “till we have assured bread to the poor man, and the filling of the flesh-pot, and the law to the weak, and the scaffold to the evil-doer.”
“All this is mighty well,” said, bluntly, Sir Geoffrey Gates, the leader of the mercenaries, a skilful soldier, but a predatory and lawless bravo; “but who is to pay me and my tall fellows?”
At this pertinent question, there was a general hush of displeasure and disgust.
“For, look you, my masters,” continued Sir Geoffrey, “as long as I and my comrades here believed that the rich earl, who hath half England for his provant, was at the head or the tail of this matter, we were contented to wait a while; but devil a groat hath yet gone into my gipsire; and as for pillage, what is a farm or a homestead? an’ it were a church or a castle there might be pickings.”
“There is much plate of silver, and a sack or so of marks and royals, in the stronghold of the Baron of Bullstock,” quoth the Saxon squire, doggedly hounding on to his revenge.
“You see, my friends,” said Coniers, with a smile, and shrugging his shoulders, “that men cannot gird a kingdom with ropes of sand. Suppose we conquer and take captive—nay, or slay—King Edward, what then?”
“The Duke of Clarence, male heir to the throne,” said the heir of Latimer, “is Lord Warwick’s son-in-law, and therefore akin to you, Sir John.”