CHAPTER VII

"WELL SUNG, MASTER SKYLARK!"

It was past high noon, and they had long since left Warwick castle far
behind. "Nicholas," said the master-player, in the middle of a stream of
amazing stories of life in London town, "there is Blacklow knoll." He
pointed to a little hill off to the left.

Nick stared; he knew the tale: how grim old Guy de Beauchamp had Piers
Gaveston's head upon that hill for calling him the Black Hound of Arden.

"Ah!" said Carew, "times have changed since then, boy, when thou couldst
have a man's head off for calling thee a name--or I would have yon
Master Bailiff Stubbes's head off short behind the ears--and Sir Thomas
Lucy's too!" he added, with a sudden flash of anger, gritting his teeth
and clenching his hand upon his poniard. "But, Nicholas, hast
anything to eat?"

"Nothing at all, sir."

Master Carew pulled from his pouch some barley-cakes and half a small
Banbury cheese, yellow as gold and with a keen, sharp savour. "'Tis
enough for both of us," said he, as they came to a shady little wood
with a clear, mossy-bottomed spring running down into a green meadow
with a mild noise, murmuring among the stones. "Come along, Nicholas;
we'll eat it under the trees."

He had a small flask of wine, but Nick drank no wine, and went down to
the spring instead. There was a wild bird singing in a bush there, and
as he trotted down the slope it hushed its wandering tune. Nick took the
sound up softly, and stood by the wet stones a little while, imitating
the bird's trilling note, and laughing to hear it answer timidly, as if
it took him for some great new bird without wings. Cocking its shy head
and watching him shrewdly with its beady eye, it sat, almost persuaded
that it was only size which made them different, until Nick clapped his
cap upon his head and strolled back, singing as he went.

It was only the thread of an old-fashioned madrigal which he had often
heard his mother sing, with quaint words long since gone out of style
and hardly to be understood, and between the staves a warbling, wordless
refrain which he had learned out on the hills and in the
fields, picked up from a bird's glad-throated morning-song.

He had always sung the plain-tunes in church without taking any
particular thought about it; and he sang easily, with a clear young
voice which had a full, flute-like note in it like the high, sweet song
of a thrush singing in deep woods.

Gaston Carew, the master-pl