Martin Lightfoot looked up with a cunning smile. "A servant can always
know his master's secrets if he likes. But that is no reason a master
should know his servant's."
"Thou shalt tell me thine, man, or I shall ride off and leave thee."
"Not so easy, my lord. Where that heavy horse can go, Martin Lightfoot can
follow. But I will tell you one secret, which I never told to living man.
I can read and write like any clerk."
"Thou read and write?"
"Ay, good Latin enough, and Irish too, what is more. And now, because I
love you, and because you I will serve, willy nilly, I will tell you all
the secrets I have, as long as my breath lasts, for my tongue is rather
stiff after that long story about the bell-wether. I was born in Ireland,
in Waterford town. My mother was an English slave, one of those that Earl
Godwin's wife--not this one that is now, Gyda, but the old one, King
Canute's sister--used to sell out of England by the score, tied together
with ropes, boys and girls from Bristol town. Her master, my father that
was (I shall know him again), got tired of her, and wanted to give her
away to one of his kernes. She would not have that; so he hung her up hand
and foot, and beat her that she died. There was an abbey hard by, and the
Church laid on him a penance,--all that they dared get out of him,--that
he should give me to the monks, being then a seven-years' boy.
Pages:
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71