Post of the Month

~ September 2005 ~  

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Alan a Dale ~ Written by Rhys.  Posted on the HoS Yahoo group January 2005.

Alan left the trackway and climbed the gentle slope of the meadows that stretched around the village of Wickham. The people of Wickham had obviously been cutting hay this June day, but now the meadows were empty in the heat.

Alan knew better than to go near Wickham. The outlaws tried to avoid being seen near the village nowadays. And although Alan knew that even after a year of being with the outlaw band he was the least likely one of the band to be recognised, he still avoided taking the track which ran near the village on its way into Sherwood.

There were no sign of soldiers anywhere around Wickham. Alan walked on, leaving Wickham far behind, and finally took to a rough, rutted track, leading towards Sherwood. A wagon rumbled by past him, bumping over the sun baked ruts of the track, and a group of men - labourers with hay- scythes over their shoulders approached in the other direction and passed him also. Alan walked on, unperturbed and unrecognised.

Even after a year of being in Sherwood, he was not often recognised outside certain villages of being one of the outlaws. He was just one of those people who could blend in with a crowd of others and not be recognised. As a result he was the perfect person for the outlaws to send on information-gathering visits to Nottingham and elsewhere.

Alan patted the small leather money pouch tied to his belt with satisfaction, comfortable in the fact that it was now empty and his errand had been completed.

He had been sent to Nottingham two days ago, not only to learn all the latest news and gossip, but to disperse a considerable sum of money amongst some of Nottingham's poor. The outlaws a week ago had caught a robber fleeing through Sherwood, discovered a large sum of money on him, and upon questioning, had discovered that he had robbed quite a few rich merchants in Nottingham by cutting their purse-strings in the crowded market.

"The money's come from Nottingham, so Nottingham might as well have it back - but this time it can go to the people who have true need of it," Robert had said. And so Alan had been sent to Nottingham on that mission.

Nottingham had been, as ever, interesting. Alan had dispensed the money to the poor and needy, had kept his head down, blended in with the crowds, slept in a corner of an alehouse, and as always, had listened and observed. There had been plenty of news to hear, plenty of gossip circulating - as well as some new tunes to listen to and memorise for practice later. Alan's minstrel brain was an acute one, trained for listening and absorbing and memorising - and all the news and gossip he had heard during his time in Nottingham had been stored away to repeat to the band once he rejoined them in Sherwood.

There were a few things he felt they might be interested to hear...

He had walked past the village of Maybury and had joined a larger track which headed south. The sun beat down on his head, he was tired and thirsty. Ahead was an alehouse, set back from the trackway.

Alan had not been in it before, but he had heard about it from Scarlet, who had drank there in the past. The alehouse was situated near a crossroads - one road leading to Lincoln, one to Nottingham - which was the one Alan had been on - one leading south to London, and another leading East. It was the perfect situation for an alehouse.

Alan made a beeline for it.

A wonderful smell of food pervaded the warm June air as he approached. The small forge at the back of the alehouse rang with the noise of hammer upon anvil, whilst a travellers horse stood tied there, patiently waiting to be re-shod. A dog chased a cat across the yard, yapping furiously at its heels.

The doors of the alehouse were flung wide open to admit the air as well as any thirsty travellers, and dirty straw was being swept out of there to be dumped to one side by the door. Alan crossed the threshold and entered.

The alehouse was small and cramped-feeling. Cobwebs hung from the rafters. A ham hung from a rafter hook high above the fire, in the process of being smoked. The smell of stale ale, human sweat, bread and meat pervaded every corner. Straw was scattered over the floor of beaten earth, and rough trestle tables and benches were placed about. A group of travellers were eating and drinking in one corner, two merchants sat at another table and drank and played dice, a labourer was asleep laying on a bench against the wall. A dog crunched at some bones under one table.

Whilst Alan paused by the vacant table nearest the door, a man came over and set a jug roughly down on the table. He stank of sweat and stale ale.

"What do you want?"

"Some ale," said Alan. "And some food."

"Have you money?" the man demanded.

"Well, no," said Alan, "but I have this which will pay for it..." and searching in the leather purse tied to his belt, he brought out a small pilgrim badge; a little charm in the shape of a scallop shell. "It's silver," said Alan. "From Santiago de Campostela."

The alehouse keeper regarded the pilgrim badge. "It's tin," he said bleakly.

Alan was affronted. "No it isn't!"

The alehouse keeper was not to be taken in. "Yes it is! What do you think I am - blind? You're not the first traveller to come in here with no money and try that trick on me." He pulled down the neck of his shirt to reveal half a dozen tin pilgrim badges threaded on a chain round his neck.

"Is this not worth just one beaker of ale and small piece of bread?" Alan persisted in hope, still holding out the pilgrim badge in offering. "The very touch of such a badge is said to heal the sick and dying. It's been blessed..."

The alehouse-keeper was both sarcastic and resolute. "Who by? The Archbishop of Canterbury? No money, no food."

Alan considered everything for a moment, then leaned against the table and decided to try a new tack.

"Everything's a bit QUIET in here, isn't it?" he said to the alehouse keeper.

The alehouse keeper was aggrieved and somewhat defensive. "Business is slack, that's all."

"Exactly," said Alan. "You don't want to lose the customers you've GOT, do you." He leaned closer to speak confidentially. "What you need, friend, is entertainment for your customers." He touched his hand to the lute slung over his shoulder and gave the alehouse keeper a smile.

The keeper of the alehouse was still suspicious. "And what makes you think you're any good and won't hasten out of here the customers I've already GOT?"

"Well," said Alan, "I've served as minstrel in quite a few households."

"Tone-deaf ones, no doubt," the alehouse keeper scoffed.

Alan decided to name-drop. "Baron de Braceys household, for one."

"Oh yes? And if you're so good at your trade, why aren't you still in the Baron's employ?"

"I got bored," said Alan.

The man scoffed again. "A likely story."

"Listen," said Alan, "let me prove my worth. You don't have to give me any food until I've sung for your....crowd of customers."

The alehouse keeper gave up. "Done."

"Only - I'd beg of you in advance a beaker of your ale, if you'd be so kind." Alan patted his chest and gave a slight cough. "I've walked the dusty roads from Nottingham since this morning and my throat's exceeding dry...makes it difficult to sing."

The alehouse keeper heaved a sigh and filling a horn beaker from the jug to hand, shoved it across the table at Alan. "You'd better be good," he said warningly.

Alan gave him a smile, took the beaker up and walked across the alehouse to a small vacant trestle table set in the far corner.

His lute had been slung over his shoulder by its cord; he now sat on the edge of the table in the corner of the alehouse, one booted foot on the rough oak bench before him, and he tuned the lute's lightly strung twelve strings, aware that people in the hot and dusty alehouse had turned their attention on him, expecting a song.

Alan ran his fingers lovingly over the lute, as though it were a woman's body he stroked. The lute was a beauty, acquired only recently, with its belly of pineand pear-shaped back of yew only one-sixteenth of an inch thick; its delicacy and expressiveness of sound mirrored in its light construction. The most eloquent of all solo instruments, capable of great nuance. An ideal accompaniment for voice - so ideal, Alan believed that the pairing had beenfirst dreamt of in Heaven.

Straightening up from his attentive fine-tuning, he reached out a hand for the beaker of ale beside him on the trestle table where he sat perched, took a long drink from it, then set it down and positioned the fingers of his left hand on the finger board of the lute.

For a second, his right hand paused, hovering above the strings, and then he began to pluck at the strings with his fingers and thumb. The notes poured into the air, a heady thread of melody which mixed with his voice, and at the songthat came forth, he was aware that voices around him which had been chatting now quietened, as people listened to him.


"There is the smell of the morning dew,

The warmth of spring, the running water of the mountain stream ~

My lute plays everything I feel.

There is the darkening night, the colours of the sun,

There is the never ending belief in a better future.

There is Autumn's sadness, there is the pain of life ~

My lute plays all that.

I see nature as a painting of sound; I will play it all to you in a song.

And this is how joy and sorrow and everyday life sounds

If they cannot be seen by you ~

I can play to you what I hear, what I feel.

For every disappointment, laughter is a reason for a song

For every tale of bitter hatred heard, a sweet song of love should be sung.

There is the beautiful flight of a butterfly,

The last flight of a fading star ~

My lute plays everything I feel.

There is the chilly frost of the snowy winter,

The smallness of Man under the heavens,

There is Autumn's sadness, there is the pain of life, there is the laughter and
the sweet song of love ~

My lute plays all that."


He rarely had such an audience these days, and he revelled in it. It was like once more serving in a noble household, and as he sang, he remembered myriad evenings by a crackling fire, the sound of that and his voice and instrument providing the backdrop to the chatter and laughter of people around him as they
feasted.

He moved on from sweet ballad, to humorous tale set to song, to all the folk airs he had learnt over the years. As he sang, he was aware of the alehouse-keeper coming over and placing a tin platter of food on the table beside him; his meal earned, Alan sang several more songs, then ceased. His audience returned their full attention to their conversation, their gaming, their drinking, and Alan decided it was time to reap the reward of his performance.

His songs finished, he moved from his perch seated on the table and sat at the bench there instead, laying aside his lute and pulling the platter of food towards him. A hunk of cheese, some meat in a sticky thick sauce, and some gritty bread to mop up the sauce with. The meat was stringy, but Alan wolfed it down, using his fingers, travelling chunks of the bread around the tin platterto mop up every bit of the sauce.

He ate all the meat, pushed the platter aside, and had just reached for the hunk of cheese on the side of the platter to eat it with the last piece of bread, when a stranger loomed in front of him, over him, a rough hand clapped his shoulder in greeting, and a voice spoke.

"Well, well, Alan a Dale, is it now? I've been sitting in the corner listening to you, and I thought, I know him, I know that voice - I know those fingers that so deftly pluck the lute-strings. But the last time I saw him in our village, I knew him as Alun. Alun ap Deiniol."

Alan looked at the speaker. He was a tall man in his mid-forties with stubble that was not yet a beard. He was dressed shabbily in worn and dusty clothes. He appeared to be just another peasant come into the alehouse from the heat of the day after cutting hay. But the lilt of his voice was unmistakable to Alan.

"Gwydion Bryn," he said in recognition.

"So you remember me then, boy." Gwydion laughed and sat opposite Alan, hands around his beaker of ale. "How long's it been?"

"About ten years," Alan said. "I was sixteeen when I left...."

"So you were, so you were. Well, when you left the second time, that was. Didn't stay too long in the village that time, did you." Gwydion observed, and took a long and noisy slurp from his beaker of ale. "Haven't got your harp with you. That one you had when you left us. What happened?"

"I lost it." Alan decided not to mention that the Baron de Bracey had thrown his precious harp out of a castle window and into the moat in a frenzied rage after
learning that Alan had taken the Baron's 16 year old daughter Mildred to his bed.

"Shame, that," observed Gwydion. "Three items indispensable to a man is his harp, his cloak and his chessboard..."

"So say the Laws of Wales," Alan replied. "Well, the chess board I lack, but I'm sure I can live without it."

"So why the change of name?" Gwydion asked. He pulled the platter towards him and finished up the last morsel of bread and cheese upon it.

Alan ignored the question. "Why are you here, Gwydion?"

Gwydion hungrily chased the last crumbs of bread around the tin platter with a damp fingertip. "You know me, boy. I get around. Thought I'd come and try and make my fortune in England." He looked at the lute which lay on the table by Alan's right hand. "So you've turned your back on the Welsh harp and turned to the English lute, have you now. That's a beauty. Bet you spend more time tuning it than actually playing it. I hear they go out of tune easy."

"I manage," Alan said.

"So why the change of name?" Gwydion persisted.

"It suited," Alan said. "What's such a big difference? - Alun - Alan? In Normandy I was known as Alain. Not such a big difference."

"No indeed, but I'm hearing a big difference in your accent." Gwydion observed.

"It suited," Alan said again.

"What, to learn to speak like an Englishman?" Gwydion laughed.

"I was only eight years old when I left our village and came to England. It was easy to train myself."

"You forget where you come from, boy, and that's a bad thing," Gwydion warned.

Alan lapsed into Welsh purely to make a meaningful point. "I don't forget."

Gwydion grinned at him. "So you don't. I misjudged you."

"But I left a long time ago," said Alan, reverting back to English. "And when I did return, I realised it wasn't worth staying."

"Einion said he'd break your fingers if he found you, anyway," Gwydion commented.

Alan winced. "That's why it wasn't worth staying."

"Well, boy, you brought it on yourself for having a roll in the hay with his woman." Gwydion drained his beaker, and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand
with a sigh.

Alan leaned his chin on his hand and thought back to those times. "How is our village, Gwydion?"

"You wouldn't know the place now. It's near deserted. People have died through fever, or gone because the land has been taken from them by English lords. 'The Hall of Cynddylan, it is dark tonight,' " Gwydion quoted at him. " 'Without flame, without bed, all from the serpent of my tongue's boast. I live; my lord is dead...' "

"...'I'll weep awhile and then be silent,' " Alan finished the quote.

"That's what we all do."

They both fell silent. "Is it really that deserted now, Gwydion?" Alan wanted to know.

"Ah boy, it's a dead village now. All these Norman lords taking our lands as they see fit... Why do you think I left and came to try my luck in England?"

Alan laughed, cupping his hands round his beaker of ale. "You've been a waster since ever I can remember, Gwydion. What luck are you going to try here in England? What fortune do you intend making? What trade do you intend following?"

Gwydion grabbed the handle of the ale jug and refilled his beaker until it overflowed. "Well, I hear there's many a way to make a quick fortune hereabouts by going into the forest and waylaying rich merchants and....persuading them to part with their money."

"Well, it's a way to make a quick death - your own, if you don't know what you're doing...." Alan said wryly.

"And you do, I suppose, boy." Gwydion leaned over the table to talk more quietly. "Heard about you, see. Things I've picked up in the area. The people I've talked to....the villagers hereabouts. They said there was a minstrel with the outlaws. You don't LOOK like an outlaw, boy. So where's your bow, your sword by your side?"

"Not with me," said Alan. "I've just come from Nottingham. Do you think I'm so stupid as to wander around with bow and sword and attract attention?"

"I suppose not," Gwydion said. "Not lawful to carry a longbow, is it, unless you're a sworn forester. So what are you going to do if soldiers set upon you, boy - whack them over the head with your lute?"

Alan laughed. "My lute would splinter on first impact. Would not make a dent against any soldier's thick head. But I have a sharp dagger on me as defence, the same as any ordinary man carries. And as for me knowing what I do - I do. I didn't a year ago. But I've spent a year in the forest now as an outlaw."

"Robin i the Hood," mused Gwydion. "I've been hearing a lot about him around here. Could do with him in Wales. So that's who you're with, then? Him - or one of the other lot?"

Alan immediately pricked up his ears. "What other lot?"

"I heard...." Gwydion leaned closer to talk confidentially, "I heard there was this other lot, see. When I was in Lincoln, there was talk of them. They've been robbing folk in the woods outside Lincoln. The people of Lincoln said they heard this other lot boasting they'd come to Sherwood next and see off this Robin i the Hood - and his men."

"That's the first I've heard of them," Alan said.

"Well, they don't seem to be very friendly, boy. Reckon your leader ought to watch his back. Or, since they say he's as blind as a bat, maybe you ought to watch it for him."

"I can do that," said Alan, making a mental note to report this hither-to unknown piece of news back to Robert.

"And you watch yourself. Don't go spilling your good Welsh blood into English soil. Be a waste, that would." Gwydion got up from the table and slapped Alan's shoulder in farewell, turning to face the doorway as a large, perspiring friar wearily entered the alehouse.