Who was then the gentleman?’”
“Ay, true it is; it will ne’er be a blithe world in Merry England till all the gentlemen are out of it.”
If Sir Simon and his gay young esquires heard these ominous murmurs at all, they probably despised them as the mere idle growling of “a sort of discontented churls,” little dreaming that this was the first muttering of that tremendous storm which, in the days of Edward III.’s weak and worthless successor, was to shake all England with the terror of “Wat Tyler’s Rising.”
The farther they went, the deeper grew the horror of that plague-stricken region. The jovial shout of the teamster, the merry whistle of the ploughboy, the blithe song of the housewife over her spinning-wheel, were heard no more. The few peasants still at work in the fields had the heavy, spiritless, hopeless look of men doomed to die; and when two wayfarers met on the high-road, they glanced nervously at each other’s faces, as if expecting to see there the livid spot which was the herald of the fell destroyer.
Passing through the village of Shawford, Harcourt and his men found a Dominican friar (who had just buried with his own hands three or four victims of the plague whom no one else dared to touch) preaching to a throng of country-folk; and the knight’s crafty face changed slightly as he heard the preacher’s text—
“Hast thou killed, and also taken possession? In the place where dogs licked the blood of Naboth shall dogs lick thy blood, even thine.”
Slowly they rode down into the beautiful valley of the Itchen, and, passing under the stately trees that overhung the winding river (now in all the beauty of their fresh green leaves), mounted the farther slope, and saw before them the rich pastures and green woods of Claremont, beyond which the dark-grey tower of the ancient castle looked forth from its encircling lifeguard of noble trees.
“At last!” said Harcourt, half-aloud, as if his greedy joy at the possession of this splendid and long-coveted prize had for once overcome his wonted crafty caution.
At that moment a fearful cry, half howl and half shriek, burst from the thicket beside him, and through the crackling boughs broke a ghastly figure, with the marks of the pestilence terribly plain on its livid face, and only a few rags of clothing hanging loosely around its bony frame, which was so frightfully wasted that the scared spectators half thought they beheld a new-buried corpse starting from its grave.
The poor wretch was plainly at the point of death; but, filled with the strength of that madness which was a common symptom of the fell disease (usually impelling the wretched sufferers to communicate the horrible taint to all whom they met), he sprang like a tiger at Sir Simon’s unprotected face (for the knight had opened his visor to see his new domain more clearly), and bit him deeply in the right cheek!