About that time Father Merlin had news brought him. Runners came to the White Lodge in the forest, where Merlin was to be found sitting on a stool by the pond, fishing; or kneeling in the hall before a little wooden cross that he had hung on a peg in one of the oak posts. Every hour he might be found kneeling there, eyes closed, a smile on his harsh face, looking as though he had prayed for the souls of men and saw the Great Ones of Heaven descending instantly to succour the poor.
The runners came from north, east, and west. Each man had much the same message to give to Father Merlin, and he would listen with a rapt look and then return the fellow his blessing.
“Peace to you, my son. Assuredly, God and St. Francis have remembered the poor.”
Merlin knew what he knew as he took his walks in the forest, a thin, grey figure in a great, green world. He would pause upon the hills, and look east and west, his hood turned back, his eyes gleaming, his broad nostrils sniffing the air. Father Merlin had been a villein’s son, and all the fierce, sneering spirit of the man sprang back with a snarl of hatred from those who ruled by right of birth. A hundred hungers and humiliations lay on him like a hair shirt. He chafed to tear the pomp from the lords’ shoulders and to fling it as a cape of freedom over the poor, though the noble’s purse might find its way into St. Francis’s wallet and his power into St. Francis’s hand.
He cried aloud as the west wind came up the slope of the hill, and blew his grey frock about his knotty knees.
“Blow, wind, blow! The poor shall trample Mammon into the mud!”
Much such a cry as Merlin’s had gone through all the land, and the men of the fields had heard it and lifted their heads—brown waters running together in flood time from every ditch and stream. The carter had left his horses; the woodman had shouldered his axe and left the oak bark but half stripped for the tanner; the serf had set his scythe upon a pole; the smith had shouldered his hammer; the charcoal burner had forgotten his fire. Everywhere they gathered, these brown men, with a murmur like the rustling of dead leaves when a great host marches to battle along a woodland road in autumn. Their mouths were uttering strange new words, “The Commons and the King!”
A stupor of fear had seized on all those who ruled. The lords and gentry had shut themselves up in their castles and houses, or ridden off out of the way of the wind. Doors were barred, bridges raised, shutters bolted. Reeves, clerks, tax-gatherers, hid themselves in cellars and hay-lofts. Women shivered and lay awake at night. The suddenness of the thing had astonished the gentles as though the brown earth were heaving under their feet. Knights who had fought in the French wars sat sullenly at home, too proud, perhaps, to risk the pride of the sword against the insolence of a smith’s hammer or a labourer’s flail. The ignoble many had risen against the arrogant few, and the arrogance was with the mob for the moment.
It was a wild May, both in wind and temper. The hawthorn bloom was scattered like snow, and late frosts nipped even the young bracken. The north wind roared out of a hard blue sky, making the green world shiver, and bringing Berserk steel into the painted pleasance of spring. The mood of the hind suited the mood of the weather. The fields were empty, and the men who should have laboured there were running like madmen hither and thither. The cold spell out of the north seemed to have given a rougher edge to the boorish temper, making it remember the mud and rain in the winter fields, the sour food at home in the draughty clay-daubed cottage; while Master Gentleman sat in his stone house before the fire under the great chimney, and drank hot Spanish wines, and had furs to draw about him. The wolf spirit was abroad. These men of the fields were drunk with years of envy, hatred, and sullen anger; they raged through the country-side, plundering cellars and larders, tearing down the banks of fish ponds, breaking mill wheels, cutting down orchard trees, emptying granaries and dovecots, killing deer, and harrying warrens. Pride of birth was taken by the beard, mocked, and treated to the savage horse-play of these men of the soil.
“When Adam delved and Eve span,