The White Company / Белый отряд. Книга для чтения на английском языке

One noontide I was by Franklin Swinton’s gate, when up he rides with a yeoman-pricker at his heels. �Ouvre[42 - Ouvre – (фр.) открой],’ he cried, �ouvre,’ or some such word, making sign for me to open the gate; and then �Merci[43 - Merci – (фр.) спасибо],’ as though he were afeared of me. And you talk of an English king!”

“I do not marvel at it,” cried the Cambrig scholar, speaking in the high drawling voice which was common among his class. “It is not a tongue for men of sweet birth and delicate upbringing.

“I will not hear a word said against old King Ned,” cried Hordle John in a voice like a bull. “What if he is fond of a bright eye and a saucy face? I know one of his subjects who could match him at that. If he cannot speak like an Englishman, I trow that he can fight like an Englishman; and he was hammering at the gates of Paris while alehouse topers were grutching and grumbling at home.

This loud speech, coming from a man of so formidable an appearance, somewhat daunted the disloyal party, and they fell into a sullen silence, which enabled Alleyne to hear something of the talk which was going on in the farther corner between the physician, the tooth-drawer, and the gleeman.

“A raw rat,” the man of drugs was saying, “that is what it is ever my use to order for the plague – a raw rat with its paunch cut open.

“Might it not be broiled, most learned sir?” asked the tooth-drawer. “A raw rat sounds a most sorry and cheerless dish.”

“Not to be eaten,” cried the physician, in high disdain. “Why should any man eat such a thing?”

“Why, indeed?” asked the gleeman, taking a long drain at his tankard.

“It is to be placed on the sore or swelling. For the rat, mark you, being a foul-living creature, hath a natural drawing or affinity for all foul things, so that the noxious humours pass from the man into the unclean beast.

“Would that cure the Black Death, master?” asked Jenkin.

“Aye, truly would it, my fair son.”

“Then I am right glad that there were none who knew of it. The Black Death is the best friend that ever the common folk had in England.”

“How that then?” asked Hordle John.