Rewards and Fairies - Penn State University

Rewards and Fairies
wanted to be able to punish that man’s village. Then the vil- Hugh told him over the list of beaters. Half were women; and
lage would take care to send a good man.’
many of the rest were clerks—Saxon and Norman priests.
‘So! So it was. But, lest our work should be too easy, the ‘Hugh and I had not time to laugh for eight days, till De
King had done such a dread justice over at Salehurst, for the Aquila, as Lord of Pevensey, met our King and led him to the
killing of the Kentish knight (twenty-six men he hanged, as I first shooting-stand—by the Mill on the edge of the forest.
heard), that our folk were half mad with fear before we be- Hugh and I—it was no work for hot heads or heavy hands—
gan. It is easier to dig out a badger gone to earth than a Saxon lay with our beaters on the skirts of Dallington to watch both
gone dumb-sullen. And atop of their misery the old rumour them and the deer. When De Aquila’s great horn blew we went
waked that Harold the Saxon was alive and would bring them forward, a line half a league long. Oh, to see the fat clerks, their
deliverance from us Normans. This has happened every au- gowns tucked up, puffing and roaring, and the sober millers
tumn since Santlache fight.’
dusting the under-growth with their staves; and, like as not,
‘But King Harold was killed at Hastings,’said Una. between them a Saxon wench, hand in hand with her man,
‘So it was said, and so it was believed by us Normans, but shrilling like a kite as she ran, and leaping high through the
our Saxons always believed he would come again. That rumour fern, all for joy of the sport.’ ‘Ah! How! Ah! How! How-ah!
did not make our work any more easy.’
Sa-how-ah!’ Puck bellowed without warning, and Swallow
Sir Richard strode on down the far slope of the wood, where bounded forward, ears cocked, and nostrils cracking.
the trees thin out. It was fascinating to watch how he man- ‘Hal-lal-lal-lal-la-hai-ie!’ Sir Richard answered in a high clear
aged his long spurs among the lumps of blackened ling. shout.
‘But we did it!’ he said. ‘After all, a woman is as good as a The two voices joined in swooping circles of sound, and a
man to beat the woods, and the mere word that deer are afoot heron rose out of a red osier-bed below them, circling as
makes cripples and crones young again. De Aquila laughed when though he kept time to the outcry. Swallow quivered and
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