"Friends are these by the winding of their horns;thou art quit for this night,old lad."And then Jack Straw cried out from the cross:"Fair and softly,my masters!These be men of our Fellowship,and are for your guests this night;they are from the bents this side of Medway,and are with us here because of the pilgrimage road,and that is the best in these parts,and so the shortest to Rochester.And doubt ye nothing of our being taken unawares this night;for I have bidden and sent out watchers of the ways,and neither a man's son nor a mare's son may come in on us without espial.Now make we our friends welcome.Forsooth,Ilooked for them an hour later;and had they come an hour earlier yet,some heads would now lie on the cold grass which shall lie on a feather bed to-night.But let be,since all is well!
"Now get we home to our houses,and eat and drink and slumber this night,if never once again,amid the multitude of friends and fellows;and yet soberly and without riot,since so much work is to hand.Moreover the priest saith,bear ye the dead men,both friends and foes,into the chancel of the church,and there this night he will wake them:but after to-morrow let the dead abide to bury their dead!"Therewith he leapt down from the cross,and Will and I bestirred ourselves and mingled with the new-comers.They were some three hundred strong,clad and armed in all ways like the people of our township,except some half-dozen whose armour shone cold like ice under the moonbeams.Will Green soon had a dozen of them by the sleeve to come home with him to board and bed,and then I lost him for some minutes,and turning about saw John Ball standing behind me,looking pensively on all the stir and merry humours of the joyous uplanders.
"Brother from Essex,"said he,"shall I see thee again to-night?
I were fain of speech with thee;for thou seemest like one that has seen more than most.""Yea,"said I,"if ye come to Will Green's house,for thither am I bidden.""Thither shall I come,"said he,smiling kindly,"or no man Iknow in field.Lo you,Will Green looking for something,and that is me.But in his house will be song and the talk of many friends;and forsooth I have words in me that crave to come out in a quiet place where they may have each one his own answer.If thou art not afraid of dead men who were alive and wicked this morning,come thou to the church when supper is done,and there we may talk all we will."Will Green was standing beside us before he had done,with his hand laid on the priest's shoulder,waiting till he had spoken out;and as I nodded Yea to John Ball he said:
"Now,master priest,thou hast spoken enough this two or three hours,and this my new brother must tell and talk in my house;and there my maid will hear his wisdom which lay still under the hedge e'en now when the bolts were abroad.So come ye,and ye good fellows,come!"So we turned away together into the little street.But while John Ball had been speaking to me I felt strangely,as though Ihad more things to say than the words I knew could make clear:as if I wanted to get from other people a new set of words.
Moreover,as we passed up the street again I was once again smitten with the great beauty of the scene;the houses,the church with its new chancel and tower,snow-white in the moonbeams now;the dresses and arms of the people,men and women (for the latter were now mixed up with the men);their grave sonorous language,and the quaint and measured forms of speech,were again become a wonder to me and affected me almost to tears.
