“Marry, this is the weather to bring to remembrance Christmas-tide in Merry England, where I would we all were now. There, at least, if we had cold and frost, we had good cheer as well; but in this heaven-forsaken land of briars and wolves (beshrew it and all that pertaineth to it!) we have none of the good cheer, and a double portion of cold to atone for the lack of it!”
So growled, as well as his chattering teeth would let him, the half-frozen gate-porter of Fougeray Castle (a Breton fortress lately captured by a detachment of the Duke of Lancaster’s English army) on a bleak, gloomy winter evening.
“For my part,” grunted the stout English archer whom he addressed, “had I but fire enow to keep the blood from freezing in my veins, I could make shift without the cheer thou speak’st of. Ere long we shall be at our last faggot, unless our captain and his men bring back some wood from their foraging this night.”
“That were an unlikely chance,” muttered the porter, with a gloomy shake of his grey head; “for he who tarries to cut wood when Bertrand du Guesclin is abroad, may be himself cut down instead. But at what look’st thou so earnestly, comrade?”
“Methinks my wish is granted as soon as spoken, like him that had a fairy godmother in the old tale,” grinned the archer; “for yonder, if my eyes deceive me not, come six stout peasants, each with a lusty load of faggots!”
He was right, and even the crabbed old porter’s sour face brightened as he saw that not only were the broad shoulders of the advancing peasants freighted with faggots, but that they were dragging with them a rude “sled,” piled high with logs and bundles of firewood.
The drawbridge being down for the convenience of the English commandant (who was expected back every moment with his hundred foragers), the six grey-frocked, slouch-hatted, long-haired fellows came right up to the gate, and the foremost (a short, sturdy, clumsy man very much like a bear on hind legs) said humbly, in rude and broken French—
“Good sirs, if ye need wood, I pray ye of your grace to buy this that we have brought. Such valiant gentlemen, with the spoil of all France in their pouches, will not grudge a penny to us poor fellows!”
“Marry, ye have brought your wares to the right market!” laughed the archer. “Bring in your load, and when our captain returns (as he will speedily) I warrant he pays ye in right English fashion for such store of winter fuel.”
With many a grunt and gasp (as if their strength were well nigh spent with dragging that heavy load up the steep path to the castle gate) the peasants tugged their sled forward. But, just inside the gate, they fairly stuck fast, leaving sled and log-pile (quite by accident, of course) just under the grate of the portcullis, which was thus kept from falling to bar the entrance.