“Good!” returned Richard. “It
irks me to be doing. Set we on for Shoreby!
Sir Daniel’s residence in Shoreby was a tall,
commodious, plastered mansion, framed in carven oak,
and covered by a low-pitched roof of thatch.
To the back there stretched a garden, full of fruit-trees,
alleys, and thick arbours, and overlooked from the
far end by the tower of the abbey church.
The house might contain, upon a pinch, the retinue
of a greater person than Sir Daniel; but even now
it was filled with hubbub. The court rang with
arms and horseshoe-iron; the kitchens roared with
cookery like a bees’-hive; minstrels, and the
players of instruments, and the cries of tumblers,
sounded from the hall. Sir Daniel, in his profusion,
in the gaiety and gallantry of his establishment,
rivalled with Lord Shoreby, and eclipsed Lord Risingham.
All guests were made welcome. Minstrels, tumblers,
players of chess, the sellers of relics, medicines,
perfumes, and enchantments, and along with these every
sort of priest, friar, or pilgrim, were made welcome
to the lower table, and slept together in the ample
lofts, or on the bare boards of the long dining-hall.
On the afternoon following the wreck of the Good Hope,
the buttery, the kitchens, the stables, the covered
cartshed that surrounded two sides of the court, were
all crowded by idle people, partly belonging to Sir
Daniel’s establishment, and attired in his livery
of murrey and blue, partly nondescript strangers attracted
to the town by greed, and received by the knight through
policy, and because it was the fashion of the time.
The snow, which still fell without interruption, the
extreme chill of the air, and the approach of night,
combined to keep them under shelter. Wine, ale,
and money were all plentiful; many sprawled gambling
in the straw of the barn, many were still drunken from
the noontide meal. To the eye of a modern it
would have looked like the sack of a city; to the
eye of a contemporary it was like any other rich and
noble household at a festive season.
Two monks—a young and an old—had
arrived late, and were now warming themselves at a
bonfire in a corner of the shed. A mixed crowd
surrounded them—jugglers, mountebanks, and
soldiers; and with these the elder of the two had
soon engaged so brisk a conversation, and exchanged
so many loud guffaws and country witticisms, that
the group momentarily increased in number.
The younger companion, in whom the reader has already
recognised Dick Shelton, sat from the first somewhat
backward, and gradually drew himself away. He
listened, indeed, closely, but he opened not his mouth;
and by the grave expression of his countenance, he
made but little account of his companion’s pleasantries.
At last his eye, which travelled continually to and
fro, and kept a guard upon all the entrances of the
house, lit upon a little procession entering by the
main gate and crossing the court in an oblique direction.
Two ladies, muffled in thick furs, led the way, and
were followed by a pair of waiting-women and four stout
men-at-arms. The next moment they had disappeared
within the house; and Dick, slipping through the crowd
of loiterers in the shed, was already giving hot pursuit.
