The Wood Beyond the World | Page 2

me and thyself also."
Bartholomew held his peace again for a while; then he said: "Goeth she
with child, my son?"
Walter reddened, and said: "I wot not; nor of whom the child may be."
Then they both sat silent, till Bartholomew spake, saying: "The end of
it is, son, that this is Monday, and that thou shalt go aboard in the small
hours of Wednesday; and meanwhile I shall look to it that thou go not
away empty-handed; the skipper of the Katherine is a good man and
true, and knows the seas well; and my servant Robert the Low, who is
clerk of the lading, is trustworthy and wise, and as myself in all matters
that look towards chaffer. The Katherine is new and stout-builded, and
should be lucky, whereas she is under the ward of her who is the saint
called upon in the church where thou wert christened, and myself
before thee; and thy mother, and my father and mother all lie under the
chancel thereof, as thou wottest."
Therewith the elder rose up and went his ways about his business, and
there was no more said betwixt him and his son on this matter.
CHAPTER II
: GOLDEN WALTER TAKES SHIP TO SAIL THE SEAS
When Walter went down to the Katherine next morning, there was the
skipper Geoffrey, who did him reverence, and made him all cheer, and
showed him his room aboard ship, and the plenteous goods which his
father had sent down to the quays already, such haste as he had made.
Walter thanked his father's love in his heart, but otherwise took little
heed to his affairs, but wore away the time about the haven, gazing
listlessly on the ships that were making them ready outward, or
unlading, and the mariners and aliens coming and going: and all these
were to him as the curious images woven on a tapestry.
At last when he had wellnigh come back again to the Katherine, he saw
there a tall ship, which he had scarce noted before, a ship all-boun,
which had her boats out, and men sitting to the oars thereof ready to

tow her outwards when the hawser should be cast off, and by seeming
her mariners were but abiding for some one or other to come aboard.
So Walter stood idly watching the said ship, and as he looked, lo! folk
passing him toward the gangway. These were three; first came a dwarf,
dark-brown of hue and hideous, with long arms and ears exceeding
great and dog-teeth that stuck out like the fangs of a wild beast. He was
clad in a rich coat of yellow silk, and bare in his hand a crooked bow,
and was girt with a broad sax.
After him came a maiden, young by seeming, of scarce twenty
summers; fair of face as a flower; grey-eyed, brown-haired, with lips
full and red, slim and gentle of body. Simple was her array, of a short
and strait green gown, so that on her right ankle was clear to see an iron
ring.
Last of the three was a lady, tall and stately, so radiant of visage and
glorious of raiment, that it were hard to say what like she was; for
scarce might the eye gaze steady upon her exceeding beauty; yet must
every son of Adam who found himself anigh her, lift up his eyes again
after he had dropped them, and look again on her, and yet again and yet
again. Even so did Walter, and as the three passed by him, it seemed to
him as if all the other folk there about had vanished and were nought;
nor had he any vision before his eyes of any looking on them, save
himself alone. They went over the gangway into the ship, and he saw
them go along the deck till they came to the house on the poop, and
entered it and were gone from his sight.
There he stood staring, till little by little the thronging people of the
quays came into his eye-shot again; then he saw how the hawser was
cast off and the boats fell to tugging the big ship toward the
harbour-mouth with hale and how of men. Then the sail fell down from
the yard and was sheeted home and filled with the fair wind as the
ship's bows ran up on the first green wave outside the haven. Even
therewith the shipmen cast abroad a banner, whereon was done in a
green field a grim wolf ramping up against a maiden, and so went the
ship upon her way.

Walter stood awhile staring at her empty place where the waves ran
into the haven-mouth, and then turned aside and toward the Katherine;
and at first he was minded