“What else?”
“Nothing else!”
“Well, you are not over-civil, anyhow, my Saxon churl,” said the man of scrolls and goose-quills.
“Frankly,” I answered, “Sir Monk, the smaller civility you look for from me to-day the less likely you are to be disappointed. Out with that infernal catechism of yours, and have done, and move your black shadows from my porch.”
At this the clerk shrugged his shoulders—no doubt he did not look to be a very welcome guest—and coughed and spit, and then unfurled in our free sunshine a great roll of questions, and forthwith proceeded to expound them in bastard Latin, smacking of moldy cathedral cells and cloister pedantry.
“Now, mark me, Sir Voewood, and afterward answer truly in everything. Here, first, I will read you the declaration of your neighbor, the worthy thane Sewin, in order that you may see how the matter should go, and then afterward I will question you yourself,” and, taking a parchment from a junior, he began: “Here is what Sewin told us: Rex tenet in Dominio Sohurst; de firma Regis Edwardi fuit. Tunc se defendebat pro 17 Hidis; nihil geldaverunt. Terra est 16 Carucatæ; in Dominio sunt 2æ Carucatæ, et 24 Villani, et 10 Bordarij cum 20 Carucis. Ibi Ecclesia quam Willelmus tenet de Rege cum dimidia Hida in Elemosina, Silva 40 Porcorum et ipsa est in parco Regis——”
But hardly had my friend got so far as this in displaying the domesticity of Sewin the thane, when there broke a loud uproar from the rear of Voewood, and the tripping Latin came to a sudden halt as there emerged in sight a rabble of Saxon peasants and Norman prickers freely exchanging buffets. In the midst of them was our bailiff, a very stalwart fellow, hauling along and beating as he came a luckless soldier in the foreign garb just then so detestable to our eyes.
“Why,” I said, “what may all this be about? What has the fellow done, Sven, that your Saxon cudgel makes such friends with his Norman cape?”
“What? Why, the graceless yonker, not content with bursting open the buttery door and setting all these scullion men-at-arms drinking my lady’s ale and rioting among her stores, must needs harry the maidens, scaring them out of their wits, and putting the whole place in an uproar! As I am an honest man, there has been more good ale spilled this half-hour, more pottery broken, more linen torn, more roasts upset, more maids set screaming, than since the Danes last came round this way and pillaged us from roof to cellar!”
“Why, you fat Saxon porker!” cried the leader of the troops, pushing to the front, “what are you good for but for pillage? Drunken serf! And were it not for the politic heart of yonder King, I and mine would make you and yours sigh again for your Danish ravishers, looking back from our mastery to their red fury with sickly longing! Out on you! Unhand the youth, or by St. Bridget, there will be a fat carcass for your crows to peck at!” and he put his hand upon his dagger.