Sir Nigel | Page 4

The most
which the chronicles can do is to catch the cadence and style of their
talk, and to infuse here and there such a dash of the archaic as may
indicate their fashion of speech.
I am aware that there are incidents which may strike the modern reader

as brutal and repellent. It is useless, however, to draw the Twentieth
Century and label it the Fourteenth. It was a sterner age, and men's
code of morality, especially in matters of cruelty, was very different.
There is no incident in the text for which very good warrant may not be
given. The fantastic graces of Chivalry lay upon the surface of life, but
beneath it was a half-savage population, fierce and animal, with little
ruth or mercy. It was a raw, rude England, full of elemental passions,
and redeemed only by elemental virtues. Such I have tried to draw it.
For good or bad, many books have gone to the building of this one. I
look round my study table and I survey those which lie with me at the
moment, before I happily disperse them forever. I see La Croix's
"Middle Ages," Oman's "Art of War," Rietstap's "Armorial General,"
De la Borderie's "Histoire de Bretagne," Dame Berner's "Boke of St.
Albans," "The Chronicle of Jocelyn of Brokeland," "The Old Road,"
Hewitt's "Ancient Armour," Coussan's "Heraldry," Boutell's "Arms,"
Browne's "Chaucer's "England," Cust's "Scenes of the Middle Ages,"
Husserand's "Wayfaring Life," Ward's "Canterbury Pilgrims;"
Cornish's "Chivalry," Hastings' "British Archer," Strutt's "Sports,"
Johnes Froissart, Hargrove's "Archery," Longman's "Edward III,"
Wright's "Domestic Manners." With these and many others I have lived
for months. If I have been unable to combine and transfer their effect,
the fault is mine.
ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE.
"UNDERSHAW," November 30, 1905.

I. THE HOUSE OF LORING
In the month of July of the year 1348, between the feasts of St.
Benedict and of St. Swithin, a strange thing came upon England, for
out of the east there drifted a monstrous cloud, purple and piled, heavy
with evil, climbing slowly up the hushed heaven. In the shadow of that
strange cloud the leaves drooped in the trees, the birds ceased their
calling, and the cattle and the sheep gathered cowering under the
hedges. A gloom fell upon all the land, and men stood with their eyes
upon the strange cloud and a heaviness upon their hearts. They crept
into the churches where the trembling people were blessed and shriven
by the trembling priests. Outside no bird flew, and there came no
rustling from the woods, nor any of the homely sounds of Nature. All

was still, and nothing moved, save only the great cloud which rolled up
and onward, with fold on fold from the black horizon. To the west was
the light summer sky, to the east this brooding cloud-bank, creeping
ever slowly across, until the last thin blue gleam faded away and the
whole vast sweep of the heavens was one great leaden arch.
Then the rain began to fall. All day it rained, and all the night and all
the week and all the month, until folk had forgotten the blue heavens
and the gleam of the sunshine. It was not heavy, but it was steady and
cold and unceasing, so that the people were weary of its hissing and its
splashing, with the slow drip from the eaves. Always the same thick
evil cloud flowed from east to west with the rain beneath it. None could
see for more than a bow-shot from their dwellings for the drifting veil
of the rain-storms. Every morning the folk looked upward for a break,
but their eyes rested always upon the same endless cloud, until at last
they ceased to look up, and their hearts despaired of ever seeing the
change. It was raining at Lammas-tide and raining at the Feast of the
Assumption and still raining at Michaelmas. The crops and the hay,
sodden and black, had rotted in the fields, for they were not worth the
garnering. The sheep had died, and the calves also, so there was little to
kill when Martinmas came and it was time to salt the meat for the
winter. They feared a famine, but it was worse than famine which was
in store for them.
For the rain had ceased at last, and a sickly autumn sun shone upon a
land which was soaked and sodden with water. Wet and rotten leaves
reeked and festered under the foul haze which rose from the woods.
The fields were spotted with monstrous fungi of a size and color never
matched before - scarlet and mauve and liver and black. It was as
though the sick earth had burst into foul pustules; mildew and lichen
mottled the walls, and with that filthy crop Death sprang