Chapter 21

CHAPTER II - "IN MINE ENEMIES' HOUSE"

Sir Daniel's residence in Shoreby was a tall, commodious, plastered
mansion, framed in carven oak, and covered by a low-pitched roof of
thatch. To the back there stretched a garden, full of fruit-trees,
alleys, and thick arbours, and overlooked from the far end by the
tower of the abbey church.

The house might contain, upon a pinch, the retinue of a greater
person than Sir Daniel; but even now it was filled with hubbub.
The court rang with arms and horseshoe-iron; the kitchens roared
with cookery like a bees'-hive; minstrels, and the players of
instruments, and the cries of tumblers, sounded from the hall. Sir
Daniel, in his profusion, in the gaiety and gallantry of his
establishment, rivalled with Lord Shoreby, and eclipsed Lord
Risingham.

All guests were made welcome. Minstrels, tumblers, players of
chess, the sellers of relics, medicines, perfumes, and
enchantments, and along with these every sort of priest, friar, or
pilgrim, were made welcome to the lower table, and slept together
in the ample lofts, or on the bare boards of the long dining-hall.

On the afternoon following the wreck of the Good Hope, the buttery,
the kitchens, the stables, the covered cartshed that surrounded two
sides of the court, were all crowded by idle people, partly
belonging to Sir Daniel's establishment, and attired in his livery
of murrey and blue, partly nondescript strangers attracted to the
town by greed, and received by the knight through policy, and
because it was the fashion of the time.

The snow, which still fell without interruption, the extreme chill
of the air, and the approach of night, combined to keep them under
shelter. Wine, ale, and money were all plentiful; many sprawled
gambling in the straw of the barn, many were still drunken from the
noontide meal. To the eye of a modern it would have looked like
the sack of a city; to the eye of a contemporary it was like any
other rich and noble household at a festive season.

Two monks - a young and an old - had arrived late, and were now
warming themselves at a bonfire in a corner of the shed. A mixed
crowd surrounded them - jugglers, mountebanks, and soldiers; and
with these the elder of the two had soon engaged so brisk a
conversation, and exchanged so many loud guffaws and country
witticisms, that the group momentarily increased in number.

The younger companion, in whom the reader has already recognised
Dick Shelton, sat from the first somewhat backward, and gradually
drew himself away. He listened, indeed, closely, but he opened not
his mouth; and by the grave expression of his countenance, he made
but little account of his companion's pleasantries.

At last his eye,