The White Company is a historical adventure by
Arthur Conan Doyle set during the Hundred Years' War. The story is set in England, France, and Spain, in the years 1366 and 1367, against the background of the campaign of Edward, the Black Prince to restore Peter of Castile to the throne of the Kingdom of Castile. The climax of the book occurs before the Battle of Nájera. Doyle became inspired to write the novel after attending a lecture on the Middle Ages in 1889. After extensive research, The White Company was published in serialized form in 1891 in Cornhill Magazine. Additionally, the book is considered a companion to Doyle's later work Sir Nigel, which explores the early campaigns of Sir Nigel Loring and Samkin Aylward.
The novel is relatively unknown today, though it was very popular up through the Second World War. In fact, Doyle himself regarded this and his other historical novels more highly than the Sherlock Holmes adventures for which he is mainly remembered.
The "White Company" of the title is a free company of archers, led by one of the main characters. The name is taken from a real-life 14th-Century Italian mercenary company, led by John Hawkwood. (Wikipedia)
The edition illustrated by N.C. Wyeth was published by David McKay 1922.
As these three brothers advanced towards him to carry out the Abbot's
direction, the smile faded from the novice's face, and he glanced right
and left with his fierce brown eyes, like a bull at a baiting. Then, with
a sudden deep-chested shout, he tore up the heavy oaken prie-dieu and
poised it to strike, taking two steps backward the while, that none might
take him at a vantage.
"By the black rood of Waltham!" he roared, "if any knave among you lays a
finger-end upon the edge of my gown, I will crush his skull like a
filbert!" With his thick knotted arms, his thundering voice, and his
bristle of red hair, there was something so repellent in the man that the
three brothers flew back at the very glare of him; and the two rows of
white monks strained away from him like poplars in a tempest. The Abbot
only sprang forward with shining eyes; but the chancellor and the master
hung upon either arm and wrested him back out of danger's way.
"Shalt clip me as best you can then," quoth the archer, moving out into
the open space, and keeping a most wary eye upon his opponent. He had
thrown off his green jerkin, and his chest was covered only by a pink silk
jupon, or undershirt, cut low in the neck and sleeveless. Hordle John was
stripped from his waist upwards, and his huge body, with his great muscles
swelling out like the gnarled roots of an oak, towered high above the
soldier. The other, however, though near a foot shorter, was a man of
great strength; and there was a gloss upon his white skin which was
wanting in the heavier limbs of the renegade monk. He was quick on his
feet, too, and skilled at the game; so that it was clear, from the poise
of head and shine of eye, that he counted the chances to be in his favor.
It would have been hard that night, through the whole length of England,
to set up a finer pair in face of each other.
Big John stood waiting in the centre with a sullen, menacing eye, and his
red hair in a bristle, while the archer paced lightly and swiftly to the
right and the left with crooked knee and hands advanced. Then with a
sudden dash, so swift and fierce that the eye could scarce follow it, he
flew in upon his man and locked his leg round him. It was a grip that,
between men of equal strength, would mean a fall; but Hordle John tore him
off from him as he might a rat, and hurled him across the room, so that
his head cracked up against the wooden wall.
As they advanced, the path still tended upwards, running from heath into
copses of holly and yew, and so back into heath again. It was joyful to
hear the merry whistle of blackbirds as they darted from one clump of
greenery to the other. Now and again a peaty amber colored stream rippled
across their way, with ferny over-grown banks, where the blue kingfisher
flitted busily from side to side, or the gray and pensive heron, swollen
with trout and dignity, stood ankle-deep among the sedges. Chattering jays
and loud wood-pigeons flapped thickly overhead, while ever and anon the
measured tapping of Nature's carpenter, the great green woodpecker,
sounded from each wayside grove. On either side, as the path mounted, the
long sweep of country broadened and expanded, sloping down on the one side
through yellow forest and brown moor to the distant smoke of Lymington and
the blue misty channel which lay alongside the sky-line, while to the
north the woods rolled away, grove topping grove, to where in the furthest
distance the white spire of Salisbury stood out hard and clear against the
cloudless sky. To Alleyne whose days had been spent in the low-lying
coastland, the eager upland air and the wide free country-side gave a
sense of life and of the joy of living which made his young blood tingle
in his veins. Even the heavy John was not unmoved by the beauty of their
road, while the bowman whistled lustily or sang snatches of French love
songs in a voice which might have scared the most stout-hearted maiden
that ever hearkened to serenade.
"This way!" the woman whispered, in a low eager voice. "Through the bushes
to that forked ash. Do not heed me; I can run as fast as you, I trow. Now
into the stream—right in, over ankles, to throw the dog off, though
I think it is but a common cur, like its master." As she spoke, she sprang
herself into the shallow stream and ran swiftly up the centre of it, with
the brown water bubbling over her feet and her hand out-stretched toward
the clinging branches of bramble or sapling. Alleyne followed close at her
heels, with his mind in a whirl at this black welcome and sudden shifting
of all his plans and hopes. Yet, grave as were his thoughts, they would
still turn to wonder as he looked at the twinkling feet of his guide and
saw her lithe figure bend this way and that, dipping under boughs,
springing over stones, with a lightness and ease which made it no small
task for him to keep up with her. At last, when he was almost out of
breath, she suddenly threw herself down upon a mossy bank, between two
holly-bushes, and looked ruefully at her own dripping feet and bedraggled
skirt.
The breeze blew, the
sail bellied, over heeled the portly vessel, and away she plunged through
the smooth blue rollers, amid the clang of the minstrels on her poop and
the shouting of the black crowd who fringed the yellow beach. To the left
lay the green Island of Wight, with its long, low, curving hills peeping
over each other's shoulders to the sky-line; to the right the wooded
Hampshire coast as far as eye could reach; above a steel-blue heaven, with
a wintry sun shimmering down upon them, and enough of frost to set the
breath a-smoking.
"By my troth!" said Chandos with a smile, "it is very fitting that we
should be companions, Nigel, for since you have tied up one of your eyes,
and I have had the mischance to lose one of mine, we have but a pair
between us. Ah, Sir Oliver! you were on the blind side of me and I saw you
not. A wise woman hath made prophecy that this blind side will one day be
the death of me. We shall go in to the prince anon; but in truth he hath
much upon his hands, for what with Pedro, and the King of Majorca, and the
King of Navarre, who is no two days of the same mind, and the Gascon
barons who are all chaffering for terms like so many hucksters, he hath an
uneasy part to play. But how left you the Lady Loring?"
"Then on guard again!" cried the young squire, and sprang in with a fire
and a fury which more than made up for the shortness of his weapon. It had
not escaped him that his opponent was breathing in short, hoarse gasps,
like a man who is dizzy with fatigue. Now was the time for the purer
living and the more agile limb to show their value. Back and back gave
Tranter, ever seeking time for a last cut. On and on came Alleyne, his
jagged point now at his foeman's face, now at his throat, now at his
chest, still stabbing and thrusting to pass the line of steel which
covered him.
...the two combatants advanced from either end in full armor
with their two-handed swords sloping over their shoulders. The stranger
walked heavily and with a measured stride, while the English knight
advanced as briskly as though there was no iron shell to weigh down the
freedom of his limbs. At four paces distance they stopped, eyed each other
for a moment, and then in an instant fell to work with a clatter and clang
as though two sturdy smiths were busy upon their anvils. Up and down went
the long, shining blades, round and round they circled in curves of
glimmering light, crossing, meeting, disengaging, with flash of sparks at
every parry. Here and there bounded Sir Nigel, his head erect, his jaunty
plume fluttering in the air, while his dark opponent sent in crashing blow
upon blow, following fiercely up with cut and with thrust, but never once
getting past the practised blade of the skilled swordsman.
They sat at the lowest depth of
human misery, and hugged a bitter comfort to their souls as they realized
that they could go no lower. Yet they had still the human gift of speech,
and would take council among themselves in their brushwood hovels, glaring
with bleared eyes and pointing with thin fingers at the great widespread
chateaux which ate like a cancer into the life of the country-side. When
such men, who are beyond hope and fear, begin in their dim minds to see
the source of their woes, it may be an evil time for those who have wronged
them. The weak man becomes strong when he has nothing, for then only can
he feel the wild, mad thrill of despair. High and strong the chateaux,
lowly and weak the brushwood hut; but God help the seigneur and his lady
when the men of the brushwood set their hands to the work of revenge!
"My God!" cried Alleyne, shaking in every limb. "What has come upon us?
What devil's deed is this?"
"Here is flint and steel," said John stolidly. "The lamp, Aylward! This
moonshine softens a man's heart. Now we may use the eyes which God hath
given us."
"By my hilt!" cried Aylward, as the yellow flame flickered up, "it is
indeed young master Ford, and I think that this seneschal is a black
villain, who dare not face us in the day but would murther us in our
sleep. By the twang of string! if I do not soak a goose's feather with his
heart's blood, it will be no fault of Samkin Aylward of the White
Company."
Day was already breaking in the east, and
the summits of the great peaks had turned rosy red, while the valleys
still lay in the shadow, when they found themselves with the cliffs on
either hand and the long, rugged pass stretching away before them.
Sir Nigel rode his great black war-horse at the head of his archers,
dressed in full armor, with Black Simon bearing his banner behind him,
while Alleyne at his bridle-arm carried his blazoned shield and his
well-steeled ashen spear. A proud and happy man was the knight, and many a
time he turned in his saddle to look at the long column of bowmen who
swung swiftly along behind him.
His eyes fell upon
the horses, grazing upon the scanty pasture, and in an instant all had
come back to him—his mission, his comrades, the need for haste. He
was dizzy, sick, faint, but he must not die, and he must not tarry, for
his life meant many lives that day. In an instant he was in his saddle and
spurring down the valley. Loud rang the swift charger's hoofs over rock
and reef, while the fire flew from the stroke of iron, and the loose
stones showered up behind him. But his head was whirling round, the blood
was gushing from his brow, his temple, his mouth. Ever keener and sharper
was the deadly pain which shot like a red-hot arrow through his side.
...and he
stands before the novice with his hands out-stretched, and his face
shining, and the light of love in his gray eyes. Her foot is on the very
lintel of the church, and yet he bars the way—and she, she thinks no
more of the wise words and holy rede of the lady abbess, but she hath
given a sobbing cry and hath fallen forward with his arms around her
drooping body and her wet cheek upon his breast. A sorry sight this for
the gaunt abbess, an ill lesson too for the stainless two-and-twenty who
have ever been taught that the way of nature is the way of sin. But Maude
and Alleyne care little for this. A dank, cold air comes out from the
black arch before them. Without, the sun shines bright and the birds are
singing amid the ivy on the drooping beeches. Their choice is made, and
they turn away hand-in-hand, with their backs to the darkness and their
faces to the light.
