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The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Armourer's Prentices, by Charlotte M. Yonge

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Title: The Armourer's Prentices

Author: Charlotte Mary Yonge

Release Date: February, 2006  [EBook #9959]
[This file was first posted on November 5, 2003]

Edition: 10

Language: English

Character set encoding: US-ASCII

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, THE ARMOURER'S PRENTICES ***




Transcribed by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk




THE ARMOURER'S PRENTICES




PREFACE



I have attempted here to sketch citizen life in the early Tudor
days, aided therein by Stowe's Survey of London, supplemented by Mr.
Loftie's excellent history, and Dr. Burton's English Merchants.

Stowe gives a full account of the relations of apprentices to their
masters; though I confess that I do not know whether Edmund Burgess
could have become a citizen of York after serving an apprenticeship
in London.  Evil May Day is closely described in Hall's Chronicle.
The ballad, said to be by Churchill, a contemporary, does not agree
with it in all respects; but the story-teller may surely have
license to follow whatever is most suitable to the purpose.  The
sermon is exactly as given by Hall, who is also responsible for the
description of the King's sports and of the Field of the Cloth of
Gold and of Ardres.  Knight's admirable Pictorial History of England
tells of Barlow, the archer, dubbed by Henry VIII. the King of
Shoreditch.

Historic Winchester describes both St. Elizabeth College and the
Archer Monks of Hyde Abbey.  The tales mentioned as told by Ambrose
to Dennet are really New Forest legends.

The Moresco's Arabic Gospel and Breviary are mentioned in Lady
Calcott's History of Spain, but she does not give her authority.
Nor can I go further than Knight's Pictorial History for the King's
adventure in the marsh.  He does not say where it happened, but as
in Stowe's map "Dead Man's Hole" appears in what is now Regent's
Park, the marsh was probably deep enough in places for the adventure
there.  Brand's Popular Antiquities are the authority for the
nutting in St. John's Wood on Holy Cross Day.  Indeed, in some
country parishes I have heard that boys still think they have a
license to crack nuts at church on the ensuing Sunday.

Seebohm's Oxford Reformers and the Life of Sir Thomas More, written
by William Roper, are my other authorities, though I touched
somewhat unwillingly on ground already lighted up by Miss Manning in
her Household of Sir Thomas More.

Galt's Life of Cardinal Wolsey afforded the description of his
household taken from his faithful Cavendish, and likewise the story
of Patch the Fool.  In fact, a large portion of the whole book was
built on that anecdote.

I mention all this because I have so often been asked my authorities
in historical tales, that I think people prefer to have what the
French appropriately call pieces justificatives.

C. M. YONGE.

August 1st, 1884



CHAPTER I.  THE VERDURER'S LODGE



"Give me the poor allottery my father left me by testament, with
that I will go buy me fortunes."
"Get you with him, you old dog."

As You Like It.


The officials of the New Forest have ever since the days of the
Conqueror enjoyed some of the pleasantest dwellings that southern
England can boast.

The home of the Birkenholt family was not one of the least
delightful.  It stood at the foot of a rising ground, on which grew
a grove of magnificent beeches, their large silvery boles rising
majestically like columns into a lofty vaulting of branches, covered
above with tender green foliage.  Here and there the shade beneath
was broken by the gilding of a ray of sunshine on a lower twig, or
on a white trunk, but the floor of the vast arcades was almost
entirely of the russet brown of the fallen leaves, save where a fern
or holly bush made a spot of green.  At the foot of the slope lay a
stretch of pasture ground, some parts covered by "lady-smocks, all
silver white," with the course of the little stream through the
midst indicated by a perfect golden river of shining kingcups
interspersed with ferns.  Beyond lay tracts of brown heath and
brilliant gorse and broom, which stretched for miles and miles along
the flats, while the dry ground was covered with holly brake, and
here and there woods of oak and beech made a sea of verdure,
purpling in the distance.

Cultivation was not attempted, but hardy little ponies, cows, goats,
sheep, and pigs were feeding, and picking their way about in the
marshy mead below, and a small garden of pot-herbs, inclosed by a
strong fence of timber, lay on the sunny side of a spacious rambling
forest lodge, only one story high, built of solid timber and roofed
with shingle.  It was not without strong pretensions to beauty, as
well as to picturesqueness, for the posts of the door, the
architecture of the deep porch, the frames of the latticed windows,
and the verge boards were all richly carved in grotesque devices.
Over the door was the royal shield, between a pair of magnificent
antlers, the spoils of a deer reported to have been slain by King
Edward IV., as was denoted by the "glorious sun of York" carved
beneath the shield.

In the background among the trees were ranges of stables and
kennels, and on the grass-plat in front of the windows was a row of
beehives.  A tame doe lay on the little green sward, not far from a
large rough deer-hound, both close friends who could be trusted at
large.  There was a mournful dispirited look about the hound,
evidently an aged animal, for the once black muzzle was touched with
grey, and there was a film over one of the keen beautiful eyes,
which opened eagerly as he pricked his ears and lifted his head at
the rattle of the door latch.  Then, as two boys came out, he rose,
and with a slowly waving tail, and a wistful appealing air, came and
laid his head against one of the pair who had appeared in the porch.
They were lads of fourteen and fifteen, clad in suits of new
mourning, with the short belted doublet, puffed hose, small ruffs
and little round caps of early Tudor times.  They had dark eyes and
hair, and honest open faces, the younger ruddy and sunburnt, the
elder thinner and more intellectual--and they were so much the same
size that the advantage of age was always supposed to be on the side
of Stephen, though he was really the junior by nearly a year.  Both
were sad and grave, and the eyes and cheeks of Stephen showed traces
of recent floods of tears, though there was more settled dejection
on the countenance of his brother.

"Ay, Spring," said the lad, "'tis winter with thee now.  A poor old
rogue!  Did the new housewife talk of a halter because he showed his
teeth when her ill-nurtured brat wanted to ride on him?  Nay, old
Spring, thou shalt share thy master's fortunes, changed though they
be.  Oh, father! father! didst thou guess how it would be with thy
boys!"  And throwing himself on the grass, he hid his face against
the dog and sobbed.

"Come, Stephen, Stephen; 'tis time to play the man!  What are we to
do out in the world if you weep and wail?"

"She might have let us stay for the month's mind," was heard from
Stephen.

"Ay, and though we might be more glad to go, we might carry bitterer
thoughts along with us.  Better be done with it at once, say I."

"There would still be the Forest!  And I saw the moorhen sitting
yester eve!  And the wild ducklings are out on the pool, and the
woods are full of song.  Oh!  Ambrose!  I never knew how hard it is
to part--"

"Nay, now, Steve, where be all your plots for bravery?  You always
meant to seek your fortune--not bide here like an acorn for ever."

"I never thought to be thrust forth the very day of our poor
father's burial, by a shrewish town-bred vixen, and a base narrow-
souled--"

"Hist! hist!" said the more prudent Ambrose.

"Let him hear who will!  He cannot do worse for us than he has done!
All the Forest will cry shame on him for a mean-hearted skinflint to
turn his brothers from their home, ere their father and his, be cold
in his grave," cried Stephen, clenching the grass with his hands, in
his passionate sense of wrong.

"That's womanish," said Ambrose.

"Who'll be the woman when the time comes for drawing cold steel?"
cried Stephen, sitting up.

At that moment there came through the porch a man, a few years over
thirty, likewise in mourning, with a paler, sharper countenance than
the brothers, and an uncomfortable pleading expression of self-
justification.

"How now, lads!" he said, "what means this passion?  You have taken
the matter too hastily.  There was no thought that ye should part
till you had some purpose in view.  Nay, we should be fain for
Ambrose to bide on here, so he would leave his portion for me to
deal with, and teach little Will his primer and accidence.  You are
a quiet lad, Ambrose, and can rule your tongue better than Stephen."

"Thanks, brother John," said Ambrose, somewhat sarcastically, "but
where Stephen goes I go."

"I would--I would have found Stephen a place among the prickers or
rangers, if--" hesitated John.  "In sooth, I would yet do it, if he
would make it up with the housewife."

"My father looked higher for his son than a pricker's office,"
returned Ambrose.

"That do I wot," said John, "and therefore, 'tis for his own good
that I would send him forth.  His godfather, our uncle Birkenholt,
he will assuredly provide for him, and set him forth--"

The door of the house was opened, and a shrewish voice cried, "Mr.
Birkenholt--here, husband!  You are wanted.  Here's little Kate
crying to have yonder smooth pouch to stroke, and I cannot reach it
for her."

"Father set store by that otter-skin pouch, for poor Prince Arthur
slew the otter," cried Stephen.  "Surely, John, you'll not let the
babes make a toy of that?"

John made a helpless gesture, and at a renewed call, went indoors.

"You are right, Ambrose," said Stephen, "this is no place for us.
Why should we tarry any longer to see everything moiled and set at
nought?  I have couched in the forest before, and 'tis summer time."

"Nay," said Ambrose, "we must make up our fardels and have our money
in our pouches before we can depart.  We must tarry the night, and
call John to his reckoning, and so might we set forth early enough
in the morning to lie at Winchester that night and take counsel with
our uncle Birkenholt."

"I would not stop short at Winchester," said Stephen.  "London for
me, where uncle Randall will find us preferment!"

"And what wilt do for Spring!"

"Take him with me, of course!" exclaimed Stephen.  "What! would I
leave him to be kicked and pinched by Will, and hanged belike by
Mistress Maud?"

"I doubt me whether the poor old hound will brook the journey."

"Then I'll carry him!"

Ambrose looked at the big dog as if he thought it would be a serious
undertaking, but he had known and loved Spring as his brother's
property ever since his memory began, and he scarcely felt that they
could be separable for weal or woe.

The verdurers of the New Forest were of gentle blood, and their
office was well-nigh hereditary.  The Birkenholts had held it for
many generations, and the reversion passed as a matter of course to
the eldest son of the late holder, who had newly been laid in the
burial ground of Beaulieu Abbey.  John Birkenholt, whose mother had
been of knightly lineage, had resented his father's second marriage
with the daughter of a yeoman on the verge of the Forest, suspected
of a strain of gipsy blood, and had lived little at home, becoming a
sort of agent at Southampton for business connected with the timber
which was yearly cut in the Forest to supply material for the
shipping.  He had wedded the daughter of a person engaged in law
business at Southampton, and had only been an occasional visitor at
home, ever after the death of his stepmother.  She had left these
two boys, unwelcome appendages in his sight.  They had obtained a
certain amount of education at Beaulieu Abbey, where a school was
kept, and where Ambrose daily studied, though for the last few
months Stephen had assisted his father in his forest duties.

Death had come suddenly to break up the household in the early
spring of 1515, and John Birkenholt had returned as if to a
patrimony, bringing his wife and children with him.  The funeral
ceremonies had been conducted at Beaulieu Abbey on the extensive
scale of the sixteenth century, the requiem, the feast, and the
dole, all taking place there, leaving the Forest lodge in its
ordinary quiet.

It had always been understood that on their father's death the two
younger sons must make their own way in the world; but he had hoped
to live until they were a little older, when he might himself have
started them in life, or expressed his wishes respecting them to
their elder brother.  As it was, however, there was no commendation
of them, nothing but a strip of parchment, drawn up by one of the
monks of Beaulieu, leaving each of them twenty crowns, with a few
small jewels and properties left by their own mother, while
everything else went to their brother.

There might have been some jealousy excited by the estimation in
which Stephen's efficiency--boy as he was--was evidently held by the
plain-spoken underlings of the verdurer; and this added to Mistress
Birkenholt's dislike to the presence of her husband's half-brothers,
whom she regarded as interlopers without a right to exist.  Matters
were brought to a climax by old Spring's resentment at being roughly
teased by her spoilt children.  He had done nothing worse than growl
and show his teeth, but the town-bred dame had taken alarm, and half
in terror, half in spite, had insisted on his instant execution,
since he was too old to be valuable.  Stephen, who loved the dog
only less than he loved his brother Ambrose, had come to high words
with her; and the end of the altercation had been that she had
declared that she would suffer no great lubbers of the half-blood to
devour her children's inheritance, and teach them ill manners, and
that go they must, and that instantly.  John had muttered a little
about "not so fast, dame," and "for very shame," but she had turned
on him, and rated him with a violence that demonstrated who was
ruler in the house, and took away all disposition to tarry long
under the new dynasty.

The boys possessed two uncles, one on each side of the house.  Their
father's elder brother had been a man-at-arms, having preferred a
stirring life to the Forest, and had fought in the last surges of
the Wars of the Roses.  Having become disabled and infirm, he had
taken advantage of a corrody, or right of maintenance, as being of
kin to a benefactor of Hyde Abbey at Winchester, to which Birkenholt
some generations back had presented a few roods of land, in right of
which, one descendant at a time might be maintained in the Abbey.
Intelligence of his brother's death had been sent to Richard
Birkenholt, but answer had been returned that he was too evil-
disposed with the gout to attend the burial.

The other uncle, Harry Randall, had disappeared from the country
under a cloud connected with the king's deer, leaving behind him the
reputation of a careless, thriftless, jovial fellow, the best
company in all the Forest, and capable of doing every one's work
save his own.

The two brothers, who were about seven and six years old at the time
of his flight, had a lively recollection of his charms as a
playmate, and of their mother's grief for him, and refusal to
believe any ill of her Hal.  Rumours had come of his attainment to
vague and unknown greatness at court, under the patronage of the
Lord Archbishop of York, which the Verdurer laughed to scorn, though
his wife gave credit to them.  Gifts had come from time to time,
passed through a succession of servants and officials of the king,
such as a coral and silver rosary, a jewelled bodkin, an agate
carved with St. Catherine, an ivory pouncet box with a pierced gold
coin as the lid; but no letter with them, as indeed Hal Randall had
never been induced to learn to read or write.  Master Birkenholt
looked doubtfully at the tokens and hoped Hal had come honestly by
them; but his wife had thoroughly imbued her sons with the belief
that Uncle Hal was shining in his proper sphere, where he was better
appreciated than at home.  Thus their one plan was to go to London
to find Uncle Hal, who was sure to put Stephen on the road to
fortune, and enable Ambrose to become a great scholar, his favourite
ambition.

His gifts would, as Ambrose observed, serve them as tokens, and with
the purpose of claiming them, they re-entered the hall, a long low
room, with a handsome open roof, and walls tapestried with dressed
skins, interspersed with antlers, hung with weapons of the chase.
At one end of the hall was a small polished barrel, always
replenished with beer, at the other a hearth with a wood fire
constantly burning, and there was a table running the whole length
of the room; at one end of this was laid a cloth, with a few
trenchers on it, and horn cups, surrounding a barley loaf and a
cheese, this meagre irregular supper being considered as a
sufficient supplement to the funeral baked meats which had abounded
at Beaulieu.  John Birkenholt sat at the table with a trencher and
horn before him, uneasily using his knife to crumble, rather than
cut, his bread.  His wife, a thin, pale, shrewish-looking woman, was
warming her child's feet at the fire, before putting him to bed, and
an old woman sat spinning and nodding on a settle at a little
distance.

"Brother," said Stephen, "we have thought on what you said.  We will
put our stuff together, and if you will count us out our portions,
we will be afoot by sunrise to-morrow."

"Nay, nay, lad, I said not there was such haste; did I, mistress
housewife?"--(she snorted); "only that thou art a well-grown lusty
fellow, and 'tis time thou wentest forth.  For thee, Ambrose, thou
wottest I made thee a fair offer of bed and board."

"That is," called out the wife, "if thou wilt make a fair scholar of
little Will.  'Tis a mighty good offer.  There are not many who
would let their child be taught by a mere stripling like thee!"

"Nay," said Ambrose, who could not bring himself to thank her, "I go
with Stephen, mistress; I would mend my scholarship ere I teach."

"As you please," said Mistress Maud, shrugging her shoulders, "only
never say that a fair offer was not made to you."

"And," said Stephen, "so please you, brother John, hand us over our
portions, and the jewels as bequeathed to us, and we will be gone."

"Portions, quotha?" returned John.  "Boy, they be not due to you
till you be come to years of discretion."

The brothers looked at one another, and Stephen said, "Nay, now,
brother, I know not how that may be, but I do know that you cannot
drive us from our father's house without maintenance, and detain
what belongs to us."

And Ambrose muttered something about "my Lord of Beaulieu."

"Look you, now," said John, "did I ever speak of driving you from
home without maintenance?  Hath not Ambrose had his choice of
staying here, and Stephen of waiting till some office be found for
him?  As for putting forty crowns into the hands of striplings like
you, it were mere throwing it to the robbers."

"That being so," said Ambrose turning to Stephen, "we will to
Beaulieu, and see what counsel my lord will give us."

"Yea, do, like the vipers ye are, and embroil us with my Lord of
Beaulieu," cried Maud from the fire.

"See," said John, in his more caressing fashion, "it is not well to
carry family tales to strangers, and--and--"

He was disconcerted by a laugh from the old nurse, "Ho!  John
Birkenholt, thou wast ever a lad of smooth tongue, but an thou, or
madam here, think that thy brothers can be put forth from thy
father's door without their due before the good man be cold in his
grave, and the Forest not ring with it, thou art mightily out in thy
reckoning!"

"Peace, thou old hag; what matter is't of thine?" began Mistress
Maud, but again came the harsh laugh.  "Matter of mine!  Why, whose
matter should it be but mine, that have nursed all three of the
lads, ay, and their father before them, besides four more that lie
in the graveyard at Beaulieu?  Rest their sweet souls!  And I tell
thee, Master John, an thou do not righteously by these thy brothers,
thou mayst back to thy parchments at Southampton, for not a man or
beast in the Forest will give thee good day."

They all felt the old woman's authority.  She was able and spirited
in her homely way, and more mistress of the house than Mrs.
Birkenholt herself; and such were the terms of domestic service,
that there was no peril of losing her place.  Even Maud knew that to
turn her out was an impossibility, and that she must be accepted
like the loneliness, damp, and other evils of Forest life.  John had
been under her dominion, and proceeded to persuade her.  "Good now,
Nurse Joan, what have I denied these rash striplings that my father
would have granted them?  Wouldst thou have them carry all their
portion in their hands, to be cozened of it at the first ale-house,
or robbed on the next heath?"

"I would have thee do a brother's honest part, John Birkenholt.  A
loving part I say not.  Thou wert always like a very popple for
hardness, and smoothness, ay, and slipperiness.  Heigh ho!  But what
is right by the lads, thou SHALT do."

John cowered under her eye as he had done at six years old, and
faltered, "I only seek to do them right, nurse."

Nurse Joan uttered an emphatic grunt, but Mistress Maud broke in,
"They are not to hang about here in idleness, eating my poor child's
substance, and teaching him ill manners."

"We would not stay here if you paid us for it," returned Stephen.

"And whither would you go?" asked John.

"To Winchester first, to seek counsel with our uncle Birkenholt.
Then to London, where uncle Randall will help us to our fortunes."

"Gipsy Hal!  He is more like to help you to a halter," sneered John,
sotto voce, and Joan herself observed, "Their uncle at Winchester
will show them better than to run after that there go-by-chance."

However, as no one wished to keep the youths, and they were equally
determined to go, an accommodation was come to at last.  John was
induced to give them three crowns apiece and to yield them up the
five small trinkets specified, though not without some murmurs from
his wife.  It was no doubt safer to leave the rest of the money in
his hands than to carry it with them, and he undertook that it
should be forthcoming, if needed for any fit purpose, such as the
purchase of an office, an apprentice's fee, or an outfit as a
squire.  It was a vague promise that cost him nothing just then, and
thus could be readily made, and John's great desire was to get them
away so that he could aver that they had gone by their own free
will, without any hardship, for he had seen enough at his father's
obsequies to show him that the love and sympathy of all the scanty
dwellers in the Forest was with them.

Nurse Joan had fought their battles, but with the sore heart of one
who was parting with her darlings never to see them again.  She bade
them doff their suits of mourning that she might make up their
fardels, as they would travel in their Lincoln-green suits.  To take
these she repaired to the little rough shed-like chamber where the
two brothers lay for the last time on their pallet bed, awake, and
watching for her, with Spring at their feet.  The poor old woman
stood over them, as over the motherless nurslings whom she had
tended, and she should probably never see more, but she was a woman
of shrewd sense, and perceived that "with the new madam in the hall"
it was better that they should be gone before worse ensued.

She advised leaving their valuables sealed up in the hands of my
Lord Abbot, but they were averse to this--for they said their uncle
Randall, who had not seen them since they were little children,
would not know them without some pledge.

She shook her head.  "The less you deal with Hal Randall the
better," she said.  "Come now, lads, be advised and go no farther
than Winchester, where Master Ambrose may get all the book-learning
he is ever craving for, and you, Master Steevie, may prentice
yourself to some good trade."

"Prentice!" cried Stephen, scornfully.

"Ay, ay.  As good blood as thine has been prenticed," returned Joan.
"Better so than be a cut-throat sword-and-buckler fellow, ever
slaying some one else or getting thyself slain--a terror to all
peaceful folk.  But thine uncle will see to that--a steady-minded
lad always was he--was Master Dick."

Consoling herself with this hope, the old woman rolled up their new
suits with some linen into two neat knapsacks; sighing over the
thought that unaccustomed fingers would deal with the shirts she had
spun, bleached, and sewn.  But she had confidence in "Master Dick,"
and concluded that to send his nephews to him at Winchester gave a
far better chance of their being cared for, than letting them be
flouted into ill-doing by their grudging brother and his wife.



CHAPTER II.  THE GRANGE OF SILKSTEDE



      "All Itchen's valley lay,
St. Catherine's breezy side and the woodlands far away,
The huge Cathedral sleeping in venerable gloom,
The modest College tower, and the bedesmen's Norman home."

LORD SELBORNE.


Very early in the morning, even according to the habits of the time,
were Stephen and Ambrose Birkenholt astir.  They were full of ardour
to enter on the new and unknown world beyond the Forest, and much as
they loved it, any change that kept them still to their altered life
would have been distasteful.

Nurse Joan, asking no questions, folded up their fardels on their
backs, and packed the wallets for their day's journey with ample
provision.  She charged them to be good lads, to say their Pater,
Credo, and Ave daily, and never omit Mass on a Sunday.  They kissed
her like their mother and promised heartily--and Stephen took his
crossbow.  They had had some hope of setting forth so early as to
avoid all other human farewells, except that Ambrose wished to begin
by going to Beaulieu to take leave of the Father who had been his
kind master, and get his blessing and counsel.  But Beaulieu was
three miles out of their way, and Stephen had not the same desire,
being less attached to his schoolmaster and more afraid of
hindrances being thrown in their way.

Moreover, contrary to their expectation, their elder brother came
forth, and declared his intention of setting them forth on their
way, bestowing a great amount of good advice, to the same purport as
that of nurse Joan, namely, that they should let their uncle Richard
Birkenholt find them some employment at Winchester, where they, or
at least Ambrose, might even obtain admission into the famous
college of St. Mary.

In fact, this excellent elder brother persuaded himself that it
would be doing them an absolute wrong to keep such promising youths
hidden in the Forest.

The purpose of his going thus far with them made itself evident.  It
was to see them past the turning to Beaulieu.  No doubt he wished to
tell the story in his own way, and that they should not present
themselves there as orphans expelled from their father's house.  It
would sound much better that he had sent them to ask counsel of
their uncle at Winchester, the fit person to take charge of them.
And as he represented that to go to Beaulieu would lengthen their
day's journey so much that they might hardly reach Winchester that
night, while all Stephen's wishes were to go forward, Ambrose could
only send his greetings.  There was another debate over Spring, who
had followed his master as usual.  John uttered an exclamation of
vexation at perceiving it, and bade Stephen drive the dog back.  "Or
give me the leash to drag him.  He will never follow me."

"He goes with us," said Stephen.

"He!  Thou'lt never have the folly!  The old hound is half blind and
past use.  No man will take thee in with him after thee."

"Then they shall not take me in," said Stephen.  "I'll not leave him
to be hanged by thee."

"Who spoke of hanging him!"

"Thy wife will soon, if she hath not already."

"Thou wilt be for hanging him thyself ere thou have made a day's
journey with him on the king's highway, which is not like these
forest paths, I would have thee to know.  Why, he limps already."

"Then I'll carry him," said Stephen, doggedly.

"What hast thou to say to that device, Ambrose?" asked John,
appealing to the elder and wiser.

But Ambrose only answered "I'll help," and as John had no particular
desire to retain the superannuated hound, and preferred on the whole
to be spared sentencing him, no more was said on the subject as they
went along, until all John's stock of good counsel had been lavished
on his brothers' impatient ears.  He bade them farewell, and turned
back to the lodge, and they struck away along the woodland pathway
which they had been told led to Winchester, though they had never
been thither, nor seen any town save Southampton and Romsey at long
intervals.  On they went, sometimes through beech and oak woods of
noble, almost primeval, trees, but more often across tracts of holly
underwood, illuminated here and there with the snowy garlands of the
wild cherry, and beneath with wide spaces covered with young green
bracken, whose soft irregular masses on the undulating ground had
somewhat the effect of the waves of the sea.  These alternated with
stretches of yellow gorse and brown heather, sheets of cotton-grass,
and pools of white crowfoot, and all the vegetation of a mountain
side, only that the mountain was not there.

The brothers looked with eyes untaught to care for beauty, but with
a certain love of the home scenes, tempered by youth's impatience
for something new.  The nightingales sang, the thrushes flew out
before them, the wild duck and moorhen glanced on the pools.  Here
and there they came on the furrows left by the snout of the wild
swine, and in the open tracts rose the graceful heads of the deer,
but of inhabitants or travellers they scarce saw any, save when they
halted at the little hamlet of Minestead, where a small alehouse was
kept by one Will Purkiss, who claimed descent from the charcoal-
burner who had carried William Rufus's corpse to burial at
Winchester--the one fact in history known to all New Foresters,
though perhaps Ambrose and John were the only persons beyond the
walls of Beaulieu who did not suppose the affair to have taken place
in the last generation.

A draught of ale and a short rest were welcome as the heat of the
day came on, making the old dog plod wearily on with his tongue out,
so that Stephen began to consider whether he should indeed have to
be his bearer--a serious matter, for the creature at full length
measured nearly as much as he did.  They met hardly any one, and
they and Spring were alike too well known and trained, for
difficulties to arise as to leading a dog through the Forest.
Should they ever come to the term of the Forest?  It was not easy to
tell when they were really beyond it, for the ground was much of the
same kind.  Only the smooth, treeless hills, where they had always
been told Winchester lay, seemed more defined; and they saw no more
deer, but here and there were inclosures where wheat and barley were
growing, and black timbered farm-houses began to show themselves at
intervals.  Herd boys, as rough and unkempt as their charges, could
be seen looking after little tawny cows, black-faced sheep, or
spotted pigs, with curs which barked fiercely at poor weary Spring,
even as their masters were more disposed to throw stones than to
answer questions.

By and by, on the further side of a green valley, could be seen
buildings with an encircling wall of flint and mortar faced with
ruddy brick, the dark red-tiled roofs rising among walnut-trees, and
an orchard in full bloom spreading into a long green field.

"Winchester must be nigh.  The sun is getting low," said Stephen.

"We will ask.  The good folk will at least give us an answer," said
Ambrose wearily.

As they reached the gate, a team of plough horses was passing in led
by a peasant lad, while a lay brother, with his gown tucked up, rode
sideways on one, whistling.  An Augustinian monk, ruddy, burly, and
sunburnt, stood in the farm-yard, to receive an account of the day's
work, and doffing his cap, Ambrose asked whether Winchester were
near.

"Three mile or thereaway, my good lad," said the monk; "thou'lt see
the towers an ye mount the hill.  Whence art thou?" he added,
looking at the two young strangers.  "Scholars?  The College elects
not yet a while."

"We be from the Forest, so please your reverence," and are bound for
Hyde Abbey, where our uncle, Master Richard Birkenholt, dwells."

"And oh, sir," added Stephen, "may we crave a drop of water for our
dog?"

The monk smiled as he looked at Spring, who had flung himself down
to take advantage of the halt, hanging out his tongue, and panting
spasmodically.  "A noble beast," he said, "of the Windsor breed,
is't not?"  Then laying his hand on the graceful head, "Poor old
hound, thou art o'er travelled.  He is aged for such a journey, if
you came from the Forest since morn.  Twelve years at the least, I
should say, by his muzzle."

"Your reverence is right," said Stephen, "he is twelve years old.
He is two years younger than I am, and my father gave him to me when
he was a little whelp."

"So thou must needs take him to seek thy fortune with thee," said
the good-natured Augustinian, not knowing how truly he spoke.  "Come
in, my lads, here's a drink for him.  What said you was your uncle's
name?" and as Ambrose repeated it, "Birkenholt!  Living on a corrody
at Hyde!  Ay! ay!  My lads, I have a call to Winchester to-morrow,
you'd best tarry the night here at Silkstede Grange, and fare
forward with me."

The tired boys were heartily glad to accept the invitation, more
especially as Spring, happy as he was with the trough of water
before him, seemed almost too tired to stand over it, and after the
first, tried to lap, lying down.  Silkstede was not a regular
convent, only a grange or farm-house, presided over by one of the
monks, with three or four lay brethren under him, and a little
colony of hinds, in the surrounding cottages, to cultivate the farm,
and tend a few cattle and numerous sheep, the special care of the
Augustinians.

Father Shoveller, as the good-natured monk who had received the
travellers was called, took them into the spacious but homely
chamber which served as refectory, kitchen, and hall.  He called to
the lay brother who was busy over the open hearth to fry a few more
rashers of bacon; and after they had washed away the dust of their
journey at the trough where Spring had slaked his thirst, they sat
down with him to a hearty supper, which smacked more of the grange
than of the monastery, spread on a large solid oak table, and washed
down with good ale.  The repast was shared by the lay brethren and
farm servants, and also by two or three big sheep dogs, who had to
be taught their manners towards Spring.

There was none of the formality that Ambrose was accustomed to at
Beaulieu in the great refectory, where no one spoke, but one of the
brethren read aloud some theological book from a stone pulpit in the
wall.  Here Brother Shoveller conversed without stint, chiefly with
the brother who seemed to be a kind of bailiff, with whom he
discussed the sheep that were to be taken into market the next day,
and the prices to be given for them by either the college, the
castle, or the butchers of Boucher Row.  He however found time to
talk to the two guests, and being sprung from a family in the
immediate neighbourhood, he knew the verdurer's name, and ere he was
a monk, had joined in the chase in the Forest.

There was a little oratory attached to the hall, where he and the
lay brethren kept the hours, to a certain degree, putting two or
three services into one, on a liberal interpretation of laborare est
orare.  Ambrose's responses made their host observe as they went
out, "Thou hast thy Latin pat, my son, there's the making of a
scholar in thee."

Then they took their first night's rest away from home, in a small
guest-chamber, with a good bed, though bare in all other respects.
Brother Shoveller likewise had a cell to himself, but the lay
brethren slept promiscuously among their sheep-dogs on the floor of
the refectory.

All were afoot in the early morning, and Stephen and Ambrose were
awakened by the tumultuous bleatings of the flock of sheep that were
being driven from their fold to meet their fate at Winchester
market.  They heard Brother Shoveller shouting his orders to the
shepherds in tones a great deal more like those of a farmer than of
a monk, and they made haste to dress themselves and join him as he
was muttering a morning abbreviation of his obligatory devotions in
the oratory, observing that they might be in time to hear mass at
one of the city churches, but the sheep might delay them, and they
had best break their fast ere starting.

It was Wednesday, a day usually kept as a moderate fast, so the
breakfast was of oatmeal porridge, flavoured with honey, and washed
down with mead, after which Brother Shoveller mounted his mule, a
sleek creature, whose long ears had an air of great contentment, and
rode off, accommodating his pace to that of his young companions up
a stony cart-track which soon led them to the top of a chalk down,
whence, as in a map, they could see Winchester, surrounded by its
walls, lying in a hollow between the smooth green hills.  At one end
rose the castle, its fortifications covering its own hill, beneath,
in the valley, the long, low massive Cathedral, the college
buildings and tower with its pinnacles, and nearer at hand, among
the trees, the Almshouse of Noble Poverty at St. Cross, beneath the
round hill of St. Catherine.  Churches and monastic buildings stood
thickly in the town, and indeed, Brother Shoveller said, shaking his
head, that there were well-nigh as many churches as folk to go to
them; the place was decayed since the time he remembered when Prince
Arthur was born there.  Hyde Abbey he could not show them, from
where they stood, as it lay further off by the river side, having
been removed from the neighbourhood of the Minster, because the
brethren of St. Grimbald could not agree with those of St. Swithun's
belonging to the Minster, as indeed their buildings were so close
together that it was hardly possible to pass between them, and their
bells jangled in each other's ears.

Brother Shoveller did not seem to entertain a very high opinion of
the monks of St. Grimbald, and he asked the boys whether they were
expected there.  "No," they said; "tidings of their father's death
had been sent by one of the woodmen, and the only answer that had
been returned was that Master Richard Birkenholt was ill at ease,
but would have masses said for his brother's soul."

"Hem!" said the Augustinian ominously; but at that moment they came
up with the sheep, and his attention was wholly absorbed by them, as
he joined the lay brothers in directing the shepherds who were
driving them across the downs, steering them over the high ground
towards the arched West Gate close to the royal castle.  The street
sloped rapidly down, and Brother Shoveller conducted his young
companions between the overhanging houses, with stalls between
serving as shops, till they reached the open space round the Market
Cross, on the steps of which women sat with baskets of eggs, butter,
and poultry, raised above the motley throng of cattle and sheep,
with their dogs and drivers, the various cries of man and beast
forming an incongruous accompaniment to the bells of the churches
that surrounded the market-place.

Citizens' wives in hood and wimple were there, shrilly bargaining
for provision for their households, squires and grooms in quest of
hay for their masters' stables, purveyors seeking food for the
garrison, lay brethren and sisters for their convents, and withal,
the usual margin of begging friars, wandering gleemen, jugglers and
pedlars, though in no great numbers, as this was only a Wednesday
market-day, not a fair.  Ambrose recognised one or two who made part
of the crowd at Beaulieu only two days previously, when he had "seen
through tears the juggler leap," and the jingling tune one of them
was playing on a rebeck brought back associations of almost
unbearable pain.  Happily, Father Shoveller, having seen his sheep
safely bestowed in a pen, bethought him of bidding the lay brother
in attendance show the young gentlemen the way to Hyde Abbey, and
turning up a street at right angles to the principal one, they were
soon out of the throng.

It was a lonely place, with a decayed uninhabited appearance, and
Brother Peter told them it had been the Jewry, whence good King
Edward had banished all the unbelieving dogs of Jews, and where no
one chose to dwell after them.

Soon they came in sight of a large extent of monastic buildings,
partly of stone, but the more domestic offices of flint and brick or
mortar.  Large meadows stretched away to the banks of the Itchen,
with cattle grazing in them, but in one was a set of figures to whom
the lay brother pointed with a laugh of exulting censure.

"Long bows!" exclaimed Stephen.  "Who be they?"

"Brethren of St. Grimbald, sir.  Such rule doth my Lord of Hyde
keep, mitred abbot though he be.  They say the good bishop hath
called him to order, but what recks he of bishops?  Good-day,
Brother Bulpett, here be two young kinsmen of Master Birkenholt to
visit him; and so benedicite, fair sirs.  St. Austin's grace be with
you!"

Through a gate between two little red octagonal towers, Brother
Bulpett led the two visitors, and called to another of the monks,
"Benedicite, Father Segrim, here be two striplings wanting speech of
old Birkenholt."

"Looking after dead men's shoes, I trow," muttered father Segrim,
with a sour look at the lads, as he led them through the outer
court, where some fine horses were being groomed, and then across a
second court surrounded with a beautiful cloister, with flower beds
in front of it.  Here, on a stone bench, in the sun, clad in a gown
furred with rabbit skin, sat a decrepit old man, both his hands
clasped over his staff.  Into his deaf ears their guide shouted,
"These boys say they are your kindred, Master Birkenholt."

"Anan?" said the old man, trembling with palsy.  The lads knew him
to be older than their father, but they were taken by surprise at
such feebleness, and the monk did not aid them, only saying roughly,
"There he is.  Tell your errand."

"How fares it with you, uncle?" ventured Ambrose.

"Who be ye?  I know none of you," muttered the old man, shaking his
head still more.

"We are Ambrose and Stephen from the Forest," shouted Ambrose.

"Ah!  Steve! poor Stevie!  The accursed boar has rent his goodly
face so as I would never have known him.  Poor Steve!  Best his
soul!"

The old man began to weep, while his nephews recollected that they
had heard that another uncle had been slain by the tusk of a wild
boar in early manhood.  Then to their surprise, his eyes fell on
Spring, and calling the hound by name, he caressed the creature's
head--"Spring, poor Spring!  Stevie's faithful old dog.  Hast lost
thy master?  Wilt follow me now?"

He was thinking of a Spring as well as of a Stevie of sixty years
ago, and he babbled on of how many fawns were in the Queen's Bower
this summer, and who had best shot at the butts at Lyndhurst, as if
he were excited by the breath of his native Forest, but there was no
making him understand that he was speaking with his nephews.  The
name of his brother John only set him repeating that John loved the
greenwood, and would be content to take poor Stevie's place and
dwell in the verdurer's lodge; but that he himself ought to be
abroad, he had seen brave Lord Talbot's ships ready at Southampton,
John might stay at home, but he would win fame and honour in
Gascony.

And while he thus wandered, and the boys stood by perplexed and
distressed, Brother Segrim came back, and said, "So, young sirs,
have you seen enough of your doting kinsman?  The sub-prior bids me
say that we harbour no strange, idling, lubber lads nor strange dogs
here.  'Tis enough for us to be saddled with dissolute old men-at-
arms without all their idle kin making an excuse to come and pay
their devoirs.  These corrodies are a heavy charge and a weighty
abuse, and if there be the visitation the king's majesty speaks of,
they will be one of the first matters to be amended."

Wherewith Stephen and Ambrose found themselves walked out of the
cloister of St. Grimbald, and the gates shut behind them.



CHAPTER III.  KINSMEN AND STRANGERS



"The reul of St. Maure and of St. Beneit
Because that it was old and some deale streit
This ilke monk let old things pace;
He held ever of the new world the trace."

CHAUCER.


"The churls!" exclaimed Stephen.

"Poor old man!" said Ambrose; "I hope they are good to him!"

"To think that thus ends all that once was gallant talk of fighting
under Talbot's banner," sighed Stephen, thoughtful for a moment.
"However, there's a good deal to come first."

"Yea, and what next?" said the elder brother.

"On to uncle Hal.  I ever looked most to him.  He will purvey me to
a page's place in some noble household, and get thee a clerk's or
scholar's place in my Lord of York's house.  Mayhap there will be
room for us both there, for my Lord of York hath a goodly following
of armed men."

"Which way lies the road to London?"

"We must back into the town and ask, as well as fill our stomachs
and our wallets," said Ambrose.  "Talk of their rule!  The
entertaining of strangers is better understood at Silkstede than at
Hyde."

"Tush!  A grudged crust sticks in the gullet," returned Stephen.
"Come on, Ambrose, I marked the sign of the White Hart by the
market-place.  There will be a welcome there for foresters."

They returned on their steps past the dilapidated buildings of the
old Jewry, and presently saw the market in full activity; but the
sounds and sights of busy life where they were utter strangers, gave
Ambrose a sense of loneliness and desertion, and his heart sank as
the bolder Stephen threaded the way in the direction of a broad
entry over which stood a slender-bodied hart with gold hoofs, horns,
collar, and chain.

"How now, my sons?" said a full cheery voice, and to their joy, they
found themselves pushed up against Father Shoveller.

"Returned already!  Did you get scant welcome at Hyde?  Here, come
where we can get a free breath, and tell me."

They passed through the open gateway of the White Hart, into the
court, but before listening to them, the monk exchanged greetings
with the hostess, who stood at the door in a broad hat and velvet
bodice, and demanded what cheer there was for noon-meat.

"A jack, reverend sir, eels and a grampus fresh sent up from
Hampton; also fresh-killed mutton for such lay folk as are not
curious of the Wednesday fast.  They are laying the board even now."

"Lay platters for me and these two young gentlemen," said the
Augustinian.  "Ye be my guests, ye wot," he added, "since ye tarried
not for meat at Hyde."

"Nor did they ask us," exclaimed Stephen; "lubbers and idlers were
the best words they had for us."

"Ho! ho!  That's the way with the brethren of St Grimbald!  And your
uncle?"

"Alas, sir, he doteth with age," said Ambrose.  "He took Stephen for
his own brother, dead under King Harry of Windsor."

"So!  I had heard somewhat of his age and sickness.  Who was it who
thrust you out?"

"A lean brother with a thin red beard, and a shrewd, puckered
visage."

"Ha!  By that token 'twas Segrim the bursar.  He wots how to drive a
bargain.  St. Austin! but he deemed you came to look after your
kinsman's corrody."

"He said the king spake of a visitation to abolish corrodies from
religious houses," said Ambrose.

"He'll abolish the long bow from them first," said Father Shoveller.
"Ay, and miniver from my Lord Abbot's hood.  I'd admonish you, my
good brethren of S.  Grimbald, to be in no hurry for a visitation
which might scarce stop where you would fain have it.  Well, my
sons, are ye bound for the Forest again?  An ye be, we'll wend back
together, and ye can lie at Silkstede to-night."

"Alack, kind father, there's no more home for us in the Forest,"
said Ambrose.

"Methought ye had a brother?"

"Yea; but our brother hath a wife."

"Ho! ho!  And the wife will none of you?"

"She would have kept Ambrose to teach her boy his primer," said
Stephen; "but she would none of Spring nor of me."

"We hoped to receive counsel from our uncle at Hyde," added Ambrose.

"Have ye no purpose now?" inquired the Father, his jolly good-
humoured face showing much concern.

"Yea," manfully returned Stephen.  "'Twas what I ever hoped to do,
to fare on and seek our fortune in London."

"Ha!  To pick up gold and silver like Dick Whittington.  Poor old
Spring here will scarce do you the part of his cat," and the monk's
hearty laugh angered Stephen into muttering, "We are no fools," but
Father Shoveller only laughed the more, saying, "Fair and softly, my
son, ye'll never pick up the gold if ye cannot brook a kindly quip.
Have you friends or kindred in London?"

"Yea, that have we, sir," cried Stephen; "our mother's own brother,
Master Randall, hath come to preferment there in my Lord Archbishop
of York's household, and hath sent us tokens from time to time,
which we will show you."

"Not while we be feasting," said Father Shoveller, hastily checking
Ambrose, who was feeling in his bosom.  "See, the knaves be bringing
their grampus across the court.  Here, we'll clean our hands, and be
ready for the meal;" and he showed them, under a projecting gallery
in the inn yard a stone trough, through which flowed a stream of
water, in which he proceeded to wash his hands and face, and to wipe
them in a coarse towel suspended nigh at hand.  Certainly after
handling sheep freely there was need, though such ablutions were a
refinement not indulged in by all the company who assembled round
the well-spread board of the White Hart for the meal after the
market.  They were a motley company.  By the host's side sat a
knight on his way home from pilgrimage to Compostella, or perhaps a
mission to Spain, with a couple of squires and other attendants, and
converse of political import seemed to be passing between him and a
shrewd-looking man in a lawyer's hood and gown, the recorder of
Winchester, who preferred being a daily guest at the White Hart to
keeping a table of his own.  Country franklins and yeomen, merchants
and men-at-arms, palmers and craftsmen, friars and monks, black,
white, and grey, and with almost all, Father Shoveller had greeting
or converse to exchange.  He knew everybody, and had friendly talk
with all, on canons or crops, on war or wool, on the prices of pigs
or prisoners, on the news of the country side, or on the perilous
innovations in learning at Oxford, which might, it was feared, even
affect St. Mary's College at Winchester.

He did not affect outlandish fishes himself, and dined upon pike,
but observing the curiosity of his guests, he took good care to have
them well supplied with grampus; also in due time with varieties of
the pudding and cake kind which had never dawned on their forest-
bred imagination, and with a due proportion of good ale--the same
over which the knight might be heard rejoicing, and lauding far
above the Spanish or French wines, on which he said he had been half
starved.

Father Shoveller mused a good deal over his pike and its savoury
stuffing.  He was not by any means an ideal monk, but he was equally
far from being a scandal.  He was the shrewd man of business and
manager of his fraternity, conducting the farming operations and
making all the bargains, following his rule respectably according to
the ordinary standard of his time, but not rising to any
spirituality, and while duly observing the fast day, as to the
quality of his food, eating with the appetite of a man who lived in
the open fields.

But when their hunger was appeased, with many a fragment given to
Spring, the young Birkenholts, wearied of the endless talk that was
exchanged over the tankard, began to grow restless, and after
exchanging signs across Father Shoveller's solid person, they
simultaneously rose, and began to thank him and say they must pursue
their journey.

"How now, not so fast, my sons," said the Father; "tarry a bit, I
have more to say to thee.  Prayers and provender, thou knowst--I'll
come anon.  So, sir, didst say yonder beggarly Flemings haggle at
thy price for thy Southdown fleeces.  Weight of dirt forsooth!  Do
not we wash the sheep in the Poolhole stream, the purest water in
the shire?"

Manners withheld Ambrose from responding to Stephen's hot
impatience, while the merchant in the sleek puce-coloured coat
discussed the Flemish wool market with the monk for a good half-hour
longer.

By this time the knight's horses were brought into the yard, and the
merchant's men had made ready his palfrey, his pack-horse being
already on the way; the host's son came round with the reckoning,
and there was a general move.  Stephen expected to escape, and
hardly could brook the good-natured authority with which Father
Shoveller put Ambrose aside, when he would have discharged their
share of the reckoning, and took it upon himself.  "Said I not ye
were my guests?" quoth he.  "We missed our morning mass, it will do
us no harm to hear Nones in the Minster."

"Sir, we thank you, but we should be on our way," said Ambrose,
incited by Stephen's impatient gestures.

"Tut, tut.  Fair and softly, my son, or more haste may be worse
speed.  Methought ye had somewhat to show me."

Stephen's youthful independence might chafe, but the habit of
submission to authorities made him obediently follow the monk out at
the back entrance of the inn, behind which lay the Minster yard, the
grand western front rising in front of them, and the buildings of
St. Swithun's Abbey extending far to their right.  The hour was
nearly noon, and the space was deserted, except for an old woman
sitting at the great western doorway with a basket of rosaries made
of nuts and of snail shells, and a workman or two employed on the
bishop's new reredos.

"Now for thy tokens," said Father Shoveller.  "See my young
foresters, ye be new to the world.  Take an old man's counsel, and
never show, nor speak of such gear in an hostel.  Mine host of the
White Hart is an old gossip of mine, and indifferent honest, but who
shall say who might be within earshot?"

Stephen had a mind to say that he did not see why the meddling monk
should wish to see them at all, and Ambrose looked a little
reluctant, but Father Shoveller said in his good-humoured way, "As
you please, young sirs.  'Tis but an old man's wish to see whether
he can do aught to help you, that you be not as lambs among wolves.
Mayhap ye deem ye can walk into London town, and that the first man
you meet can point you to your uncle--Randall call ye him?--as
readily as I could show you my brother, Thomas Shoveller of
Granbury.  But you are just as like to meet with some knave who
might cozen you of all you have, or mayhap a beadle might take you
up for vagabonds, and thrust you in the stocks, or ever you get to
London town; so I would fain give you some commendation, an I knew
to whom to make it, and ye be not too proud to take it."

"You are but too good to us, sir," said Ambrose, quite conquered,
though Stephen only half believed in the difficulties.  The Father
took them within the west door of the Minster, and looking up and
down the long arcade of the southern aisle to see that no one was
watching, he inspected the tokens, and cross-examined them on their
knowledge of their uncle.

His latest gift, the rosary, had come by the hand of Friar Hurst, a
begging Minorite of Southampton, who had it from another of his
order at Winchester, who had received it from one of the king's
archers at the Castle, with a message to Mistress Birkenholt that it
came from her brother, Master Randall, who had good preferment in
London, in the house of my Lord Archbishop of York, without whose
counsel King Henry never stirred.  As to the coming of the agate and
the pouncet box, the minds of the boys were very hazy.  They knew
that the pouncet box had been conveyed through the attendants of the
Abbot of Beaulieu, but they were only sure that from that time the
belief had prevailed with their mother that her brother was
prospering in the house of the all-powerful Wolsey.  The good
Augustinian, examining the tokens, thought they gave colour to that
opinion.  The rosary and agate might have been picked up in an
ecclesiastical household, and the lid of the pouncet box was made of
a Spanish coin, likely to have come through some of the attendants
of Queen Katharine.

"It hath an appearance," he said.  "I marvel whether there be still
at the Castle this archer who hath had speech with Master Randall,
for if ye know no more than ye do at present, 'tis seeking a needle
in a bottle of hay.  But see, here come the brethren that be to sing
Nones--sinner that I am, to have said no Hours since the morn, being
letted with lawful business."

Again the unwilling Stephen had to submit.  There was no feeling for
the incongruous in those days, and reverence took very different
directions from those in which it now shows itself, so that nobody
had any objection to Spring's pacing gravely with the others towards
the Lady Chapel, where the Hours were sung, since the Choir was in
the hands of workmen, and the sound of chipping stone could be heard
from it, where Bishop Fox's elaborate lace-work reredos was in
course of erection.  Passing the shrine of St. Swithun, and the
grand tomb of Cardinal Beaufort, where his life-coloured effigy
filled the boys with wonder, they followed their leader's example,
and knelt within the Lady Chapel, while the brief Latin service for
the ninth hour was sung through by the canon, clerks, and boys.  It
really was the Sixth, but cumulative easy-going treatment of the
Breviary had made this the usual time for it, as the name of noon
still testifies.  The boys' attention, it must be confessed, was
chiefly expended on the wonderful miracles of the Blessed Virgin in
fresco on the walls of the chapel, all tending to prove that here
was hope for those who said their Ave in any extremity of fire or
flood.

Nones ended, Father Shoveller, with many a halt for greeting or for
gossip, took the lads up the hill towards the wide fortified space
where the old Castle and royal Hall of Henry of Winchester looked
down on the city, and after some friendly passages with the warder
at the gate, Father Shoveller explained that he was in quest of some
one recently come from court, of whom the striplings in his company
could make inquiry concerning a kinsman in the household of my Lord
Archbishop of York.  The warder scratched his head, and bethinking
himself that Eastcheap Jockey was the reverend.  Father's man,
summoned a horse-boy to call that worthy.

"Where was he?"

"Sitting over his pottle in the Hall," was the reply, and the monk,
with a laugh savouring little of asceticism, said he would seek him
there, and accordingly crossed the court to the noble Hall, with its
lofty dark marble columns, and the Round Table of King Arthur
suspended at the upper end.  The governor of the Castle had risen
from his meal long ago, but the garrison in the piping times of
peace would make their ration of ale last as far into the afternoon
as their commanders would suffer.  And half a dozen men still sat
there, one or two snoring, two playing at dice on a clear corner of
the board, and another, a smart well-dressed fellow in a bright
scarlet jerkin, laying down the law to a country bumpkin, who looked
somewhat dazed.  The first of these was, as it appeared, Eastcheap
Jockey, and there was something both of the readiness and the
impudence of the Londoner in his manner, when he turned to answer
the question.  He knew many in my Lord of York's house--as many as a
man was like to know where there was a matter of two hundred folk
between clerks and soldiers, he had often crushed a pottle with
them.  No; he had never heard of one called Randall, neither in hat
nor cowl, but he knew more of them by face than by name, and more by
byname than surname or christened name.  He was certainly not the
archer who had brought a token for Mistress Birkenholt, and his
comrades all avouched equal ignorance on the subject.  Nothing could
be gained there, and while Father Shoveller rubbed his bald head in
consideration, Stephen rose to take leave.

"Look you here, my fair son," said the monk.  "Starting at this
hour, though the days be long, you will not reach any safe halting
place with daylight, whereas by lying a night in this good city, you
might reach Alton to-morrow, and there is a home where the name of
Brother Shoveller will win you free lodging and entertainment."

"And to-night, good Father?" inquired Ambrose.

"That will I see to, if ye will follow me."

Stephen was devoured with impatience during the farewells in the
Castle, but Ambrose represented that the good man was giving them
much of his time, and that it would be unseemly and ungrateful to
break from him.

"What matter is it of his?  And why should he make us lose a whole
day?" grumbled Stephen.

"What special gain would a day be to us?" sighed Ambrose.  "I am
thankful that any should take heed for us."

"Ay, you love leading-strings," returned Stephen.  "Where is he
going now?  All out of our way!"

Father Shoveller, however, as he went down the Castle hill,
explained that the Warden of St. Elizabeth's Hospital was his
friend, and knowing him to have acquaintance among the clergy of St.
Paul's, it would be well to obtain a letter of commendation from
him, which might serve them in good stead in case they were
disappointed of finding their uncle at once.

"It would be better for Spring to have a little more rest," thought
Stephen, thus mitigating his own longing to escape from the monks
and friars, of whom Winchester seemed to be full.

They had a kindly welcome in the pretty little college of St.
Elizabeth of Hungary, lying in the meadows between William of
Wykeham's College and the round hill of St. Catharine.  The Warden
was a more scholarly and ecclesiastical-looking person than his
friend, the good-natured Augustinian.  After commending them to his
care, and partaking of a drink of mead, the monk of Silkstede took
leave of the youths, with a hearty blessing and advice to husband
their few crowns, not to tell every one of their tokens, and to
follow the counsel of the Warden of St. Elizabeth's, assuring them
that if they turned back to the Forest, they should have a welcome
at Silkstede.  Moreover he patted Spring pitifully, and wished him
and his master well through the journey.

St. Elizabeth's College was a hundred years older than its neighbour
St. Mary's, as was evident to practised eyes by its arches and
windows, but it had been so entirely eclipsed by Wykeham's
foundation that the number of priests, students, and choir-boys it
was intended to maintain, had dwindled away, so that it now
contained merely the Warden, a superannuated priest, and a couple of
big lads who acted as servants.  There was an air of great quietude
and coolness about the pointed arches of its tiny cloister on that
summer's day, with the old monk dozing in his chair over the
manuscript he thought he was reading, not far from the little table
where the Warden was eagerly studying Erasmus's Praise of Folly.
But the Birkenholts were of the age at which quiet means dulness, at
least Stephen was, and the Warden had pity both on them and on
himself; and hearing joyous shouts outside, he opened a little door
in the cloister wall, and revealed a multitude of lads with their
black gowns tucked up "a playing at the ball"--these being the
scholars of St. Mary's.  Beckoning to a pair of elder ones, who were
walking up and down more quietly, he consigned the strangers to
their care, sweetening the introduction by an invitation to supper,
for which he would gain permission from their Warden.

One of the young Wykehamists was shy and churlish, and sheered off
from the brothers, but the other catechised them on their views of
becoming scholars in the college.  He pointed out the cloister where
the studies took place in all weathers, showed them the hall, the
chapel, and the chambers, and expatiated on the chances of attaining
to New College.  Being moreover a scholarly fellow, he and Ambrose
fell into a discussion over the passage of Virgil, copied out on a
bit of paper, which he was learning by heart.  Some other scholars
having finished their game, and become aware of the presence of a
strange dog and two strange boys, proceeded to mob Stephen and
Spring, whereupon the shy boy stood forth and declared that the
Warden of St. Elizabeth's had brought them in for an hour's sport.

Of course, in such close quarters, the rival Warden was esteemed a
natural enemy, and went by the name of "Old Bess," so that his
recommendation went for worse than nothing, and a dash at Spring was
made by the inhospitable young savages.  Stephen stood to the
defence in act to box, and the shy lad stood by him, calling for
fair play and one at a time.  Of course a fight ensued, Stephen and
his champion on the one side, and two assailants on the other, till
after a fall on either side, Ambrose's friend interfered with a
voice as thundering as the manly crack would permit, peace was
restored, Stephen found himself free of the meads, and Spring was
caressed instead of being tormented.

Stephen was examined on his past, present, and future, envied for
his Forest home, and beguiled into magnificent accounts, not only of
the deer that had fallen to his bow and the boars that had fallen to
his father's spear, but of the honours to which his uncle in the
Archbishop's household would prefer him--for he viewed it as an
absolute certainty that his kinsman was captain among the men-at-
arms, whom he endowed on the spot with scarlet coats faced with
black velvet, and silver medals and chains.

Whereat one of the other boys was not behind in telling how his
father was pursuivant to my Lord Duke of Norfolk, and never went
abroad save with silver lions broidered on back and breast, and
trumpets going before; and another dwelt on the splendours of the
mayor and aldermen of Southampton with their chains and cups of
gold.  Stephen felt bound to surpass this with the last report that
my Lord of York's men rode Flemish steeds in crimson velvet
housings, passmented with gold and gems, and of course his uncle had
the leading of them.

"Who be thine uncle?" demanded a thin, squeaky voice.  "I have
brothers likewise in my Lord of York's meime."

"Mine uncle is Captain Harry Randall, of Shirley," quoth Stephen
magnificently, scornfully surveying the small proportions of the
speaker, "What is thy brother?"

"Head turnspit," said a rude voice, provoking a general shout of
laughter; but the boy stood his ground, and said hotly:  "He is page
to the comptroller of my lord's household, and waits at the second
table, and I know every one of the captains."

"He'll say next he knows every one of the Seven Worthies," cried
another boy, for Stephen was becoming a popular character.

"And all the paladins to boot.  Come on, little Rowley!" was the
cry.

"I tell you my brother is page to the comptroller of the household,
and my mother dwells beside the Gate House, and I know every man of
them," insisted Rowley, waxing hot.  "As for that Forest savage
fellow's uncle being captain of the guard, 'tis more like that he is
my lord's fool, Quipsome Hal!"

Whereat there was a cry, in which were blended exultation at the
hit, and vituperation of the hitter.  Stephen flew forward to avenge
the insult, but a big bell was beginning to ring, a whole wave of
black gowns rushed to obey it, sweeping little Rowley away with
them; and Stephen found himself left alone with his brother and the
two lads who had been invited to St. Elizabeth's, and who now
repaired thither with them.

The supper party in the refectory was a small one, and the rule of
the foundation limited the meal to one dish and a pittance, but the
dish was of savoury eels, and the Warden's good nature had added to
it some cates and comfits in consideration of his youthful guests.

After some conversation with the elder Wykehamist, the Warden called
Ambrose and put him through an examination on his attainments, which
proved so satisfactory, that it ended in an invitation to the
brothers to fill two of the empty scholarships of the college of the
dear St. Elizabeth.  It was a good offer, and one that Ambrose would
fain have accepted, but Stephen had no mind for the cloister or for
learning.

The Warden had no doubt that he could be apprenticed in the city of
Winchester, since the brother at home had in keeping a sum
sufficient for the fee.  Though the trade of "capping" had fallen
off, there were still good substantial burgesses who would be
willing to receive an active lad of good parentage, some being
themselves of gentle blood.  Stephen, however, would not brook the
idea.  "Out upon you, Ambrose!" said he, "to desire to bind your own
brother to base mechanical arts."

"'Tis what Nurse Joan held to be best for us both," said Ambrose.

"Joan!  Yea, like a woman, who deems a man safest when he is a
tailor, or a perfumer.  An you be minded to stay here with a black
gown and a shaven crown, I shall on with Spring and come to
preferment.  Maybe thou'lt next hear of me when I have got some fat
canonry for thee."

"Nay, I quit thee not," said Ambrose.  "If thou fare forward, so do
I.  But I would thou couldst have brought thy mind to rest there."

"What! wouldst thou be content with this worn-out place, with more
churches than houses, and more empty houses than full ones?  No! let
us on where there is something doing!  Thou wilt see that my Lord of
York will have room for the scholar as well as the man-at-arms."

So the kind offer was declined, but Ambrose was grieved to see that
the Warden thought him foolish, and perhaps ungrateful.

Nevertheless the good man gave them a letter to the Reverend Master
Alworthy, singing clerk at St. Paul's Cathedral, telling Ambrose it
might serve them in case they failed to find their uncle, or if my
Lord of York's household should not be in town.  He likewise gave
them a recommendation which would procure them a night's lodging at
the Grange, and after the morning's mass and meat, sped them on
their way with his blessing, muttering to himself, "That elder one
might have been the staff of mine age!  Pity on him to be lost in
the great and evil City!  Yet 'tis a good lad to follow that fiery
spark his brother.  Tanquam agnus inter lupos.  Alack!"



CHAPTER IV.  A HERO'S FALL



"These four came all afront and mainly made at me.  I made no more
ado, but took their seven points on my target--thus--"

SHAKESPEARE.


The journey to Alton was eventless.  It was slow, for the day was a
broiling one, and the young foresters missed their oaks and beeches,
as they toiled over the chalk downs that rose and sank in endless
succession; though they would hardly have slackened their pace if it
had not been for poor old Spring, who was sorely distressed by the
heat and the want of water on the downs.  Every now and then he lay
down, panting distressfully, with his tongue hanging out, and his
young masters always waited for him, often themselves not sorry to
rest in the fragment of shade from a solitary thorn or juniper.

The track was plain enough, and there were hamlets at long
intervals.  Flocks of sheep fed on the short grass, but there was no
approaching the shepherds, as they and their dogs regarded Spring as
an enemy, to be received with clamour, stones, and teeth, in spite
of the dejected looks which might have acquitted him of evil
intentions.

The travellers reached Alton in the cool of the evening, and were
kindly received by a monk, who had charge of a grange just outside
the little town, near one of the springs of the River Wey.

The next day's journey was a pleasanter one, for there was more of
wood and heather, and they had to skirt round the marshy borders of
various bogs.  Spring was happier, being able to stop and lap
whenever he would, and the whole scene was less unfriendly to them.
But they scarcely made speed enough, for they were still among tall
whins and stiff scrub of heather when the sun began to get low,
gorgeously lighting the tall plumes of golden broom, and they had
their doubts whether they might not be off the track; but in such
weather, there was nothing alarming in spending a night out of
doors, if only they had something for supper.  Stephen took a bolt
from the purse at his girdle, and bent his crossbow, so as to be
ready in case a rabbit sprang out, or a duck flew up from the
marshes.

A small thicket of trees was in sight, and they were making for it,
when sounds of angry voices were heard, and Spring, bristling up the
mane on his neck, and giving a few premonitory fierce growls like
thunder, bounded forward as though he had been seven years younger.
Stephen darted after him, Ambrose rushed after Stephen, and breaking
through the trees, they beheld the dog at the throat of one of three
men.  As they came on the scene, the dog was torn down and hurled
aside, giving a howl of agony, which infuriated his master.  Letting
fly his crossbow bolt full at the fellow's face, he dashed on,
reckless of odds, waving his knotted stick, and shouting with rage.
Ambrose, though more aware of the madness of such an assault, still
hurried to his support, and was amazed as well as relieved to find
the charge effectual.  Without waiting to return a blow, the
miscreants took to their heels, and Stephen, seeing nothing but his
dog, dropped on his knees beside the quivering creature, from whose
neck blood was fast pouring.  One glance of the faithful wistful
eyes, one feeble movement of the expressive tail, and Spring had
made his last farewell!  That was all Stephen was conscious of; but
Ambrose could hear the cry, "Good sirs, good lads, set me free!" and
was aware of a portly form bound to a tree.  As he cut the rope with
his knife, the rescued traveller hurried out thanks and demands--
"Where are the rest of you?" and on the reply that there were no
more, proceeded, "Then we must on, on at once, or the villains will
return!  They must have thought you had a band of hunters behind
you.  Two furlongs hence, and we shall be safe in the hostel at
Dogmersfield.  Come on, my boy," to Stephen, "the brave hound is
quite dead, more's the pity.  Thou canst do no more for him, and we
shall soon be in his case if we dally here."

"I cannot, cannot leave him thus," sobbed Stephen, who had the
loving old head on his knees.  "Ambrose! stay, we must bring him.
There, his tail wagged!  If the blood were staunched--"

"Stephen!  Indeed he is stone dead!  Were he our brother we could
not do otherwise," reasoned Ambrose, forcibly dragging his brother
to his feet.  "Go on we must.  Wouldst have us all slaughtered for
his sake?  Come!  The rogues will be upon us anon.  Spring saved
this good man's life.  Undo not his work.  See!  Is yonder your
horse, sir?  This way, Stevie!"

The instinct of catching the horse roused Stephen, and it was soon
accomplished, for the steed was a plump, docile, city-bred palfrey,
with dapple-grey flanks like well-stuffed satin pincushions, by no
means resembling the shaggy Forest ponies of the boys' experience,
but quite astray in the heath, and ready to come at the master's
whistle, and call of "Soh!  Soh!--now Poppet!"  Stephen caught the
bridle, and Ambrose helped the burgess into the saddle.  "Now, good
boys," he said, "each of you lay a hand on my pommel.  We can make
good speed ere the rascals find out our scant numbers."

"You would make better speed without us, sir," said Stephen,
hankering to remain beside poor Spring.

"D'ye think Giles Headley the man to leave two children, that have
maybe saved my life as well as my purse, to bear the malice of the
robbers?" demanded the burgess angrily.  "That were like those
fellows of mine who have shown their heels and left their master
strapped to a tree!  Thou! thou! what's thy name, that hast the most
wit, bring thy brother, unless thou wouldst have him laid by the
side of his dog."

Stephen was forced to comply, and run by Poppet's side, though his
eyes were so full of tears that he could not see his way, even when
the pace slackened, and in the twilight they found themselves among
houses and gardens, and thus in safety, the lights of an inn shining
not far off.

A figure came out in the road to meet them, crying, "Master! master!
is it you? and without scathe?  Oh, the saints be praised!"

"Ay, Tibble, 'tis I and no other, thanks to the saints and to these
brave lads!  What, man, I blame thee not, I know thou canst not
strike; but where be the rest?"

"In the inn, sir.  I strove to call up the hue and cry to come to
the rescue, but the cowardly hinds were afraid of the thieves, and
not one would come forth."

"I wish they may not be in league with them," said Master Headley.
"See! I was delivered--ay, and in time to save my purse, by these
twain and their good dog.  Are ye from these parts, my fair lads?"

"We be journeying from the New Forest to London," said Ambrose.
"The poor dog heard the tumult, and leapt to your aid, sir, and we
made after him."

"'Twas the saints sent him!" was the fervent answer.  "And" (with a
lifting of the cap) "I hereby vow to St. Julian a hound of solid
bronze a foot in length, with a collar of silver, to his shrine in
St. Faith's, in token of my deliverance in body and goods!  To
London are ye bound?  Then will we journey on together!"

They were by this time near the porch of a large country hostel,
from the doors and large bay window of which light streamed out.
And as the casement was open, those without could both see and hear
all that was passing within.

The table was laid for supper, and in the place of honour sat a
youth of some seventeen or eighteen years, gaily dressed, with a
little feather curling over his crimson cap, and thus discoursing:
-

"Yea, my good host, two of the rogues bear my tokens, besides him
whom I felled to the earth.  He came on at me with his sword, but I
had my point ready for him; and down he went before me like an ox.
Then came on another, but him I dealt with by the back stroke as
used in the tilt-yard at Clarendon."

"I trow we shall know him again, sir.  Holy saints! to think such
rascals should haunt so nigh us," the hostess was exclaiming.  "Pity
for the poor goodman, Master Headley.  A portly burgher was he,
friendly of tongue and free of purse.  I well remember him when he
went forth on his way to Salisbury, little thinking, poor soul, what
was before him.  And is he truly sped?"

"I tell thee, good woman, I saw him go down before three of their
pikes.  What more could I do but drive my horse over the nearest
rogue who was rifling him?"

"If he were still alive--which Our Lady grant!--the knaves will hold
him to ransom," quoth the host, as he placed a tankard on the table.

"I am afraid he is past ransom," said the youth, shaking his head.
"But an if he be still in the rogues' hands and living, I will get
me on to his house in Cheapside, and arrange with his mother to find
the needful sum, as befits me, I being his heir and about to wed his
daughter.  However, I shall do all that in me lies to get the poor
old seignior out of the hands of the rogues.  Saints defend me!"

"The poor old seignior is much beholden to thee," said Master
Headley, advancing amid a clamour of exclamations from three or four
serving-men or grooms, one protesting that he thought his master was
with him, another that his horse ran away with him, one showing an
arm which was actually being bound up, and the youth declaring that
he rode off to bring help.

"Well wast thou bringing it," Master Headley answered.  "I might be
still standing bound like an eagle displayed, against yonder tree,
for aught you fellows recked."

"Nay, sir, the odds--" began the youth.

"Odds! such odds as were put to rout--by what, deem you?  These two
striplings and one poor hound.  Had but one of you had the heart of
a sparrow, ye had not furnished a tale to be the laugh of the
Barbican and Cheapside.  Look well at them.  How old be you, my
brave lads?"

"I shall be sixteen come Lammas day, and Stephen fifteen at
Martinmas day, sir," said Ambrose; "but verily we did nought.  We
could have done nought had not the thieves thought more were behind
us."

"There are odds between going forward and backward," said Master
Headley, dryly.  "Ha!  Art hurt?  Thou bleedst," he exclaimed,
laying his hand on Stephen's shoulder, and drawing him to the light.

"'Tis no blood of mine," said Stephen, as Ambrose likewise came to
join in the examination.  "It is my poor Spring's.  He took the
coward's blow.  His was all the honour, and we have left him there
on the heath!"  And he covered his face with his hands.

"Come, come, my good child," said Master Headley; "we will back to
the place by times to-morrow when rogues hide and honest men walk
abroad.  Thou shalt bury thine hound, as befits a good warrior, on
the battle-field.  I would fain mark his points for the effigy we
will frame, honest Tibble, for St. Julian.  And mark ye, fellows,
thou godson Giles, above all, who 'tis that boast of their valour,
and who 'tis that be modest of speech.  Yea, thanks, mine host.  Let
us to a chamber, and give us water to wash away soil of travel and
of fray, and then to supper.  Young masters, ye are my guests.
Shame were it that Giles Headley let go farther them that have,
under Heaven and St. Julian, saved him in life, limb, and purse."

The inn was large, being the resort of many travellers from the
south, often of nobles and knights riding to Parliament, and thus
the brothers found themselves accommodated with a chamber, where
they could prepare for the meal, while Ambrose tried to console his
brother by representing that, after all, poor Spring had died
gallantly, and with far less pain than if he had suffered a wasting
old age, besides being honoured for ever by his effigy in St.
Faith's, wherever that might be, the idea which chiefly contributed
to console his master.

The two boys appeared in the room of the inn looking so unlike the
dusty, blood-stained pair who had entered, that Master Headley took
a second glance to convince himself that they were the same, before
beckoning them to seats on either side of him, saying that he must
know more of them, and bidding the host load their trenchers well
from the grand fabric of beef-pasty which had been set at the end of
the board.  The runaways, four or five in number, herded together
lower down, with a few travellers of lower degree, all except the
youth who had been boasting before their arrival, and who retained
his seat at the board, thumping it with the handle of his knife to
show his impatience for the commencement of supper; and not far off
sat Tibble, the same who had hailed their arrival, a thin, slight,
one-sided looking person, with a terrible red withered scar on one
cheek, drawing the corner of his mouth awry.  He, like Master
Headley himself, and the rest of his party were clad in red, guarded
with white, and wore the cross of St. George on the white border of
their flat crimson caps, being no doubt in the livery of their
Company.  The citizen himself, having in the meantime drawn his
conclusions from the air and gestures of the brothers, and their
mode of dealing with their food, asked the usual question in an
affirmative tone, "Ye be of gentle blood, young sirs?"

To which they replied by giving their names, and explaining that
they were journeying from the New Forest to find their uncle in the
train of the Archbishop of York.

"Birkenholt," said Tibble, meditatively.  "He beareth vert, a buck's
head proper, on a chief argent, two arrows in saltire.  Crest, a
buck courant, pierced in the gorge by an arrow, all proper."

To which the brothers returned by displaying the handles of their
knives, both of which bore the pierced and courant buck.

"Ay, ay," said the man.  "'Twill be found in our books, sir.  We
painted the shield and new-crested the morion the first year of my
prenticeship, when the Earl of Richmond, the late King Harry of
blessed memory, had newly landed at Milford Haven."

"Verily," said Ambrose, "our uncle Richard Birkenholt fought at
Bosworth under Sir Richard Pole's banner."

"A tall and stalwart esquire, methinks," said Master Headley.  "Is
he the kinsman you seek?"

"Not so, sir.  We visited him at Winchester, and found him sorely
old and with failing wits.  We be on our way to our mother's
brother, Master Harry Randall."

"Is he clerk or layman?  My Lord of York entertaineth enow of both,"
said Master Headley.

"Lay assuredly, sir," returned Stephen; "I trust to him to find me
some preferment as page or the like."

"Know'st thou the man, Tibble?" inquired the master.

"Not among the men-at-arms, sir," was the answer; "but there be a
many of them whose right names we never hear.  However, he will be
easily found if my Lord of York be returned from Windsor with his
train."

"Then will we go forward together, my young Masters Birkenholt.  I
am not going to part with my doughty champions!"--patting Stephen's
shoulder.  "Ye'd not think that these light-heeled knaves belonged
to the brave craft of armourers?"

"Certainly not," thought the lads, whose notion of armourers was
derived from the brawny blacksmith of Lyndhurst, who sharpened their
boar spears and shod their horses.  They made some kind of assent,
and Master Headley went on.  "These be the times!  This is what
peace hath brought us to!  I am called down to Salisbury to take
charge of the goods, chattels, and estate of my kinsman, Robert
Headley--Saints rest his soul!--and to bring home yonder spark, my
godson, whose indentures have been made over to me.  And I may not
ride a mile after sunset without being set upon by a sort of
robbers, who must have guessed over-well what a pack of cowards they
had to deal with."

"Sir," cried the younger Giles, "I swear to you that I struck right
and left.  I did all that man could do, but these rogues of serving-
men, they fled, and dragged me along with them, and I deemed you
were of our company till we dismounted."

"Did you so?  Methought anon you saw me go down with three pikes in
my breast.  Come, come, godson Giles, speech will not mend it!  Thou
art but a green, town-bred lad, a mother's darling, and mayst be a
brave man yet, only don't dread to tell the honest truth that you
were afeard, as many a better man might be."

The host chimed in with tales of the thieves and outlaws who then,
and indeed for many later generations, infested Bagshot heath, and
the wild moorland tracks around.  He seemed to think that the
travellers had had a hair's-breadth escape, and that a few seconds'
more delay might have revealed the weakness of the rescuers and have
been fatal to them.

However there was no danger so near the village in the morning, and,
somewhat to Stephen's annoyance, the whole place turned out to
inspect the spot, and behold the burial of poor Spring, who was
found stretched on the heather, just as he had been left the night
before.  He was interred under the stunted oak where Master Headley
had been tied.  While the grave was dug with a spade borrowed at the
inn, Ambrose undertook to cut out the dog's name on the bark, but he
had hardly made the first incision when Tibble, the singed foreman,
offered to do it for him, and made a much more sightly inscription
than he could have done.  Master Headley's sword was found
honourably broken under the tree, and was reserved to form a base
for his intended ex voto.  He uttered the vow in due form like a
funeral oration, when Stephen, with a swelling heart, had laid the
companion of his life in the little grave, which was speedily
covered in.



CHAPTER V.  THE DRAGON COURT



         "A citizen
   Of credit and renown;
A trainband captain eke was he
   Of famous London town."

COWPER.


In spite of his satisfaction at the honourable obsequies of his dog,
Stephen Birkenholt would fain have been independent, and thought it
provoking and strange that every one should want to direct his
movements, and assume the charge of one so well able to take care of
himself; but he could not escape as he had done before from the
Warden of St. Elizabeth, for Ambrose had readily accepted the
proposal that they should travel in Master Headley's company, only
objecting that they were on foot; on which the good citizen hired a
couple of hackneys for them.

Besides the two Giles Headleys, the party consisted of Tibble, the
scarred and withered foreman, two grooms, and two serving-men, all
armed with the swords and bucklers of which they had made so little
use.  It appeared in process of time that the two namesakes, besides
being godfather and godson, were cousins, and that Robert, the
father of the younger one, had, after his apprenticeship in the
paternal establishment at Salisbury, served for a couple of years in
the London workshop of his kinsman to learn the latest improvements
in weapons.  This had laid the foundation of a friendship which had
lasted through life, though the London cousin had been as prosperous
as the country one had been the reverse.  The provincial trade in
arms declined with the close of the York and Lancaster wars.  Men
were not permitted to turn from one handicraft to another, and
Robert Headley had neither aptitude nor resources.  His wife was
vain and thriftless, and he finally broke down under his
difficulties, appointing by will his cousin to act as his executor,
and to take charge of his only son, who had served out half his time
as apprentice to himself.  There had been delay until the peace with
France had given the armourer some leisure for an expedition to
Salisbury, a serious undertaking for a London burgess, who had
little about him of the ancient northern weapon-smith, and had
wanted to avail himself of the protection of the suite of the Bishop
of Salisbury, returning from Parliament.  He had spent some weeks in
disposing of his cousin's stock in trade, which was far too
antiquated for the London market; also of the premises, which were
bought by an adjoining convent to extend its garden; and he had
divided the proceeds between the widow and children.  He had
presided at the wedding of the last daughter, with whom the mother
was to reside, and was on his way back to London with his godson,
who had now become his apprentice.

Giles Headley the younger was a fine tall youth, but clumsy and
untrained in the use of his limbs, and he rode a large, powerful
brown horse, which brooked no companionship, lashing out with its
shaggy hoofs at any of its kind that approached it, more especially
at poor, plump, mottled Poppet.  The men said he had insisted on
retaining that, and no other, for his journey to London, contrary to
all advice, and he was obliged to ride foremost, alone in the middle
of the road; while Master Headley seemed to have an immense quantity
of consultation to carry on with his foreman, Tibble, whose quiet-
looking brown animal was evidently on the best of terms with Poppet.
By daylight Tibble looked even more sallow, lean, and sickly, and
Stephen could not help saying to the serving-man nearest to him,
"Can such a weakling verily be an armourer?"

"Yea, sir.  Wry-mouthed Tibble, as they call him, was a sturdy
fellow till he got a fell against the mouth of a furnace, and lay
ten months in St. Bartholomew's Spital, scarce moving hand or foot.
He cannot wield a hammer, but he has a cunning hand for gilding, and
coloured devices, and is as good as Garter-king-at-arms himself for
all bearings of knights and nobles."

"As we heard last night," said Stephen.

"Moreover in the spital he learnt to write and cast accompts like a
very scrivener, and the master trusts him more than any, except
maybe Kit Smallbones, the head smith."

"What will Smallbones think of the new prentice!" said one of the
other men.

"Prentice!  'Tis plain enough what sort of prentice the youth is
like to be who beareth the name of a master with one only daughter."

An emphatic grunt was the only answer, while Ambrose pondered on the
good luck of some people, who had their futures cut out for them
with no trouble on their own part.

This day's ride was through more inhabited parts, and was esteemed
less perilous.  They came in sight of the Thames at Lambeth, but
Master Headley, remembering how ill his beloved Poppet had brooked
the ferry, decided to keep to the south of the river by a causeway
across Lambeth marsh, which was just passable in high and dry
summers, and which conducted them to a raised road called Bankside,
where they looked across to the towers of Westminster, and the Abbey
in its beauty dawned on the imagination of Stephen and Ambrose.  The
royal standard floated over the palace, whence Master Headley
perceived that the King was there, and augured that my Lord of
York's meine would not be far to seek.  Then came broad green fields
with young corn growing, or hay waving for the scythe, the tents and
booths of May Fair, and the beautiful Market Cross in the midst of
the village of Charing, while the Strand, immediately opposite,
began to be fringed with great monasteries within their ample
gardens, with here and there a nobleman's castellated house and
terraced garden, with broad stone stairs leading to the Thames.

Barges and wherries plied up and down, the former often gaily
canopied and propelled by liveried oarsmen, all plying their arms in
unison, so that the vessel looked like some brilliant many-limbed
creature treading the water.  Presently appeared the heavy walls
inclosing the City itself, dominated by the tall openwork timber
spire of St. Paul's, with the foursquare, four-turreted Tower
acting, as it has been well said, as a padlock to a chain, and the
river's breadth spanned by London bridge, a very street of houses
built on the abutments.  Now, Bankside had houses on each side of
the road, and Wry-mouthed Tibble showed evident satisfaction when
they turned to cross the bridge, where they had to ride in single
file, not without some refractoriness on the part of young Headley's
steed.

On they went, now along streets where each story of the tall houses
projected over the last, so that the gables seemed ready to meet;
now beside walls of convent gardens, now past churches, while the
country lads felt bewildered with the numbers passing to and fro,
and the air was full of bells.

Cap after cap was lifted in greeting to Master Headley by burgess,
artisan, or apprentice, and many times did he draw Poppet's rein to
exchange greetings and receive congratulations on his return.  On
reaching St. Paul's Minster, he halted and bade the servants take
home the horses, and tell the mistress, with his dutiful greetings,
that he should be at home anon, and with guests.

"We must e'en return thanks for our safe journey and great
deliverance," he said to his young companions, and thrusting his arm
into that of a russet-vested citizen, who met him at the door, he
walked into the cathedral, recounting his adventure.

The youths followed with some difficulty through the stream of
loiterers in the nave, Giles the younger elbowing and pushing so
that several of the crowd turned to look at him, and it was well
that his kinsman soon astonished him by descending a stair into a
crypt, with solid, short, clustered columns, and high-pitched
vaulting, fitted up as a separate church, namely that of the parish
of St. Faith.  The great cathedral, having absorbed the site of the
original church, had given this crypt to the parishioners.  Here all
was quiet and solemn, in marked contrast to the hubbub in "Paul's
Walk," above in the nave.  Against the eastern pillar of one of the
bays was a little altar, and the decorations included St. Julian,
the patron of travellers, with his saltire doubly crossed, and his
stag beside him.  Little ships, trees, and wonderful enamelled
representations of perils by robbers, field and flood, hung thickly
on St. Julian's pillar, and on the wall and splay of the window
beside it; and here, after crossing himself, Master Headley rapidly
repeated a Paternoster, and ratified his vow of presenting a bronze
image of the hound to whom he owed his rescue.  One of the clergy
came up to register the vow, and the good armourer proceeded to
bespeak a mass of thanksgiving on the next morning, also ten for the
soul of Master John Birkenholt, late Verdurer of the New Forest in
Hampshire--a mode of showing his gratitude which the two sons highly
appreciated.

Then, climbing up the steps again, and emerging from the cathedral
by the west door, the boys beheld a scene for which their
experiences of Romsey, and even of Winchester, had by no means
prepared them.  It was five o'clock on a summer evening, so that the
place was full of stir.  Old women sat with baskets of rosaries and
little crosses, or images of saints, on the steps of the cathedral,
while in the open space beyond, more than one horse was displaying
his paces for the benefit of some undecided purchaser, who had been
chaffering for hours in Paul's Walk.  Merchants in the costume of
their countries, Lombard, Spanish, Dutch, or French, were walking
away in pairs, attended by servants, from their Exchange, likewise
in the nave.  Women, some alone, some protected by serving-men or
apprentices, were returning from their orisons, or, it might be,
from their gossipings.  Priests and friars, as usual, pervaded
everything, and round the open space were galleried buildings with
stalls beneath them, whence the holders were removing their wares
for the night.  The great octagonal structure of Paul's Cross stood
in the centre, and just beneath the stone pulpit, where the sermons
were wont to be preached, stood a man with a throng round him,
declaiming a ballad at the top of his sing-song voice, and causing
much loud laughter by some ribaldry about monks and friars.

Master Headley turned aside as quickly as he could, through
Paternoster Row, which was full of stalls, where little black books,
and larger sheets printed in black-letter, seemed the staple
commodities, and thence the burgess, keeping a heedful eye on his
young companions among all his greetings, entered the broader space
of Cheapside, where numerous prentice lads seemed to be playing at
different sports after the labours of the day.

Passing under an archway surmounted by a dragon with shining scales,
Master Headley entered a paved courtyard, where the lads started at
the figures of two knights in full armour, their lances in rest, and
their horses with housings down to their hoofs, apparently about to
charge any intruder.  But at that moment there was a shriek of joy,
and out from the scarlet and azure petticoats of the nearest steed,
there darted a little girl, crying, "Father! father!" and in an
instant she was lifted in Master Headley's arms, and was clinging
round his neck, while he kissed and blessed her, and as he set her
on her feet, he said, "Here, Dennet, greet thy cousin Giles Headley,
and these two brave young gentlemen.  Greet them like a courteous
maiden, or they will think thee a little town mouse."

In truth the child had a pointed little visage, and bright brown
eyes, somewhat like a mouse, but it was a very sweet face that she
lifted obediently to be kissed not only by the kinsman, but by the
two guests.  Her father meantime was answering with nods to the
respectful welcomes of the workmen, who thronged out below, and
their wives looking down from the galleries above; while Poppet and
the other horses were being rubbed down after their journey.

The ground-floor of the buildings surrounding the oblong court
seemed to be entirely occupied by forges, workshops, warehouses and
stables.  Above, were open railed galleries, with outside stairs at
intervals, giving access to the habitations of the workpeople on
three sides.  The fourth, opposite to the entrance, had a much
handsomer, broad, stone stair, adorned on one side with a stone
figure of the princess fleeing from the dragon, and on the other of
St. George piercing the monster's open mouth with his lance, the
scaly convolutions of the two dragons forming the supports of the
handrail on either side.  Here stood, cap in hand, showing his thick
curly hair, and with open front, displaying a huge hairy chest, a
giant figure, whom his master greeted as Kit Smallbones, inquiring
whether all had gone well during his absence.  "'Tis time you were
back, sir, for there's a great tilting match on hand for the Lady
Mary's wedding.  Here have been half the gentlemen in the Court
after you, and my Lord of Buckingham sent twice for you since
Sunday, and once for Tibble Steelman, and his squire swore that if
you were not at his bidding before noon to-morrow, he would have his
new suit of Master Hillyer of the Eagle."

"He shall see me when it suiteth me," said Mr. Headley coolly.  "He
wotteth well that Hillyer hath none who can burnish plate armour
like Tibble here."

"Moreover the last iron we had from that knave Mepham is nought.  It
works short under the hammer."

"That shall be seen to, Kit.  The rest of the budget to-morrow.  I
must on to my mother."

For at the doorway, at the head of the stairs, there stood the still
trim and active figure of an old woman, with something of the mouse
likeness seen in her grand-daughter, in the close cap, high hat, and
cloth dress, that sumptuary opinion, if not law, prescribed for the
burgher matron, a white apron, silver chain and bunch of keys at her
girdle.  Due and loving greetings passed between mother and son,
after the longest and most perilous absence of Master Headley's
life, and he then presented Giles, to whom the kindly dame offered
hand and cheek, saying, "Welcome, my young kinsman, your good father
was well known and liked here.  May you tread in his steps!"

"Thanks, good mistress," returned Giles.  "I am thought to have a
pretty taste in the fancy part of the trade.  My Lord of Montagu--"

Before he could get any farther, Mistress Headley was inquiring what
was the rumour she had heard of robbers and dangers that had beset
her son, and he was presenting the two young Birkenholts to her.
"Brave boys! good boys," she said, holding out her hands and kissing
each according to the custom of welcome, "you have saved my son for
me, and this little one's father for her.  Kiss them, Dennet, and
thank them."

"It was the poor dog," said the child, in a clear little voice,
drawing back with a certain quaint coquetting shyness; "I would
rather kiss him."

"Would that thou couldst, little mistress," said Stephen.  "My poor
brave Spring!"

"Was he thine own?  Tell me all about him," said Dennet, somewhat
imperiously.

She stood between the two strangers looking eagerly up with
sorrowfully interested eyes, while Stephen, out of his full heart,
told of his faithful comradeship with his hound from the infancy of
both.  Her father meanwhile was exchanging serious converse with her
grandmother, and Giles finding himself left in the background,
began:  "Come hither, pretty coz, and I will tell thee of my Lady of
Salisbury's dainty little hounds."

"I care not for dainty little hounds," returned Dennet; "I want to
hear of the poor faithful dog that flew at the wicked robber."

"A mighty stir about a mere chance," muttered Giles.

"I know what YOU did," said Dennet, turning her bright brown eyes
full upon him.  "You took to your heels."

Her look and little nod were so irresistibly comical that the two
brothers could not help laughing; whereupon Giles Headley turned
upon them in a passion.

"What mean ye by this insolence, you beggars' brats picked up on the
heath?"

"Better born than thou, braggart and coward that thou art!" broke
forth Stephen, while Master Headley exclaimed, "How now, lads?  No
brawling here!"

Three voices spoke at once.

"They were insolent."

"He reviled our birth."

"Father! they did but laugh when I told cousin Giles that he took to
his heels, and he must needs call them beggars' brats picked up on
the heath."

"Ha! ha! wench, thou art woman enough already to set them together
by the ears," said her father, laughing.  "See here, Giles Headley,
none who bears my name shall insult a stranger on my hearth."

Stephen however had stepped forth holding out his small stock of
coin, and saying, "Sir, receive for our charges, and let us go to
the tavern we passed anon."

"How now, boy!  Said I not ye were my guests?"

"Yea, sir, and thanks; but we can give no cause for being called
beggars nor beggars' brats."

"What beggary is there in being guests, my young gentlemen?" said
the master of the house.  "If any one were picked up on the heath,
it was I.  We owned you for gentlemen of blood and coat armour, and
thy brother there can tell thee that, ye have no right to put an
affront on me, your host, because a rude prentice from a country
town hath not learnt to rule his tongue."

Giles scowled, but the armourer spoke with an authority that imposed
on all, and Stephen submitted, while Ambrose spoke a few words of
thanks, after which the two brothers were conducted by an external
stair and gallery to a guest-chamber, in which to prepare for
supper.

The room was small, but luxuriously filled beyond all ideas of the
young foresters, for it was hung with tapestry, representing the
history of Joseph; the bed was curtained, there was a carved chest
for clothes, a table and a ewer and basin of bright brass with the
armourer's mark upon it, a twist in which the letter H and the
dragon's tongue and tail were ingeniously blended.  The City was far
in advance of the country in all the arts of life, and only the more
magnificent castles and abbeys, which the boys had never seen,
possessed the amount of comforts to be found in the dwellings of the
superior class of Londoners.  Stephen was inclined to look with
contempt upon the effeminacy of a churl merchant.

"No churl," returned Ambrose, "if manners makyth man, as we saw at
Winchester."

"Then what do they make of that cowardly clown, his cousin?"

Ambrose laughed, but said, "Prove we our gentle blood at least by
not brawling with the fellow.  Master Headley will soon teach him to
know his place."

"That will matter nought to us.  To-morrow shall we be with our
uncle Hal.  I only wish his lord was not of the ghostly sort, but
perhaps he may prefer me to some great knight's service.  But oh!
Ambrose, come and look.  See!  The fellow they call Smallbones is
come out to the fountain in the middle of the court with a bucket in
each hand.  Look!  Didst ever see such a giant?  He is as big and
brawny as Ascapart at the bar-gate at Southampton.  See! he lifts
that big pail full and brimming as though it were an egg shell.  See
his arm!  'Twere good to see him wield a hammer!  I must look into
his smithy before going forth to-morrow."

Stephen clenched his fist and examined his muscles ere donning his
best mourning jerkin, and could scarce be persuaded to complete his
toilet, so much was he entertained with the comings and goings in
the court, a little world in itself, like a college quadrangle.  The
day's work was over, the forges out, and the smiths were lounging
about at ease, one or two sitting on a bench under a large elm-tree
beside the central well, enjoying each his tankard of ale.  A few
more were watching Poppet being combed down, and conversing with the
newly-arrived grooms.  One was carrying a little child in his arms,
and a young man and maid sitting on the low wall round the well,
seemed to be carrying on a courtship over the pitcher that stood
waiting to be filled.  Two lads were playing at skittles, children
were running up and down the stairs and along the wooden galleries,
and men and women went and came by the entrance gateway between the
two effigies of knights in armour.  Some were servants bringing helm
or gauntlet for repair, or taking the like away.  Some might be
known by their flat caps to be apprentices, and two substantial
burgesses walked in together, as if to greet Master Headley on his
return.  Immediately after, a man-cook appeared with white cap and
apron, bearing aloft a covered dish surrounded by a steamy cloud,
followed by other servants bearing other meats; a big bell began to
sound, the younger men and apprentices gathered together and the
brothers descended the stairs, and entered by the big door into the
same large hall where they had been received.  The spacious hearth
was full of green boughs, with a beaupot of wild rose, honeysuckle,
clove pinks and gilliflowers; the lower parts of the walls were hung
with tapestry representing the adventures of St. George; the
mullioned windows had their upper squares filled with glass, bearing
the shield of the City of London, that of the Armourers' Company,
the rose and portcullis of the King, the pomegranate of Queen
Catharine, and other like devices.  Others, belonging to the
Lancastrian kings, adorned the pendants from the handsome open roof
and the front of a gallery for musicians which crossed one end of
the hall in the taste of the times of Henry V. and Whittington.

Far more interesting to the hungry travellers was it that the long
table, running the whole breadth of the apartment, was decked with
snowy linen, trenchers stood ready with horns or tankards beside
them, and loaves of bread at intervals, while the dishes were being
placed on the table.  The master and his entire establishment took
their meals together, except the married men, who lived in the
quadrangle with their families.  There was no division by the salt-
cellar, as at the tables of the nobles and gentry, but the master,
his family and guests, occupied the centre, with the hearth behind
them, where the choicest of the viands were placed; next after them
were the places of the journeymen according to seniority, then those
of the apprentices, household servants, and stable-men, but the
apprentices had to assist the serving-men in waiting on the master
and his party before sitting down themselves.  There was a dignity
and regularity about the whole, which could not fail to impress
Stephen and Ambrose with the weight and importance of a London
burgher, warden of the Armourers' Company, and alderman of the Ward
of Cheap.  There were carved chairs for himself, his mother, and the
guests, also a small Persian carpet extending from the hearth beyond
their seats.  This article filled the two foresters with amazement.
To put one's feet on what ought to be a coverlet!  They would not
have stepped on it, had they not been kindly summoned by old
Mistress Headley to take their places among the company, which
consisted, besides the family, of the two citizens who had entered,
and of a priest who had likewise dropped in to welcome Master
Headley's return, and had been invited to stay to supper.  Young
Giles, as a matter of course, placed himself amongst them, at which
there were black looks and whispers among the apprentices, and even
Mistress Headley wore an air of amazement.

"Mother," said the head of the family, speaking loud enough for all
to hear, "you will permit our young kinsman to be placed as our
guest this evening.  To-morrow he will act as an apprentice, as we
all have done in our time."

"I never did so at home!" cried Giles, in his loud, hasty voice.

"I trow not," dryly observed one of the guests.

Giles, however, went on muttering while the priest was pronouncing a
Latin grace, and thereupon the same burgess observed, "Never did I
see it better proved that folk in the country give their sons no
good breeding."

"Have patience with him, good Master Pepper," returned Mr. Headley.
"He hath been an only son, greatly cockered by father, mother, and
sisters, but ere long he will learn what is befiting."

Giles glared round, but he met nothing encouraging.  Little Dennet
sat with open mouth of astonishment, her grandmother looked shocked,
the household which had been aggrieved by his presumption laughed at
his rebuke, for there was not much delicacy in those days; but
something generous in the gentle blood of Ambrose moved him to some
amount of pity for the lad, who thus suddenly became conscious that
the tie he had thought nominal at Salisbury, a mere preliminary to
municipal rank, was here absolute subjection, and a bondage whence
there was no escape.  His was the only face that Giles met which had
any friendliness in it, but no one spoke, for manners imposed
silence upon youth at table, except when spoken to; and there was
general hunger enough prevailing to make Mistress Headley's fat
capon the most interesting contemplation for the present.

The elders conversed, for there was much for Master Headley to hear
of civic affairs that had passed in his absence of two months, also
of all the comings and goings, and it was ascertained that my Lord
Archbishop of York was at his suburban abode, York House, now
Whitehall.

It was a very late supper for the times, not beginning till seven
o'clock, on account of the travellers; and as soon as it was
finished, and the priest and burghers had taken their leave, Master
Headley dismissed the household to their beds, although daylight was
scarcely departed.



CHAPTER VI.  A SUNDAY IN THE CITY



"The rod of Heaven has touched them all,
   The word from Heaven is spoken:
Rise, shine and sing, thou captive thrall,
   Are not thy fetters broken?"

KEBLE.


On Sunday morning, when the young Birkenholts awoke, the whole air
seemed full of bells from hundreds of Church and Minster steeples.
The Dragon Court wore a holiday air, and there was no ring of
hammers at the forges; but the men who stood about were in holiday
attire:  and the brothers assumed their best clothes.

Breakfast was not a meal much accounted of.  It was reckoned
effeminate to require more than two meals a day, though, just as in
the verdurer's lodge at home, there was a barrel of ale on tap with
drinking horns beside it in the hall, and on a small round table in
the window a loaf of bread, to which city luxury added a cheese, and
a jug containing sack, with some silver cups beside it, and a
pitcher of fair water.  Master Headley, with his mother and
daughter, was taking a morsel of these refections, standing, and in
out-door garments, when the brothers appeared at about seven o'clock
in the morning.

"Ha! that's well," quoth he, greeting them.  "No slugabeds, I see.
Will ye come with us to hear mass at St. Faith's?"  They agreed, and
Master Headley then told them that if they would tarry till the next
day in searching out their uncle, they could have the company of
Tibble Steelman, who had to see one of the captains of the guard
about an alteration of his corslet, and thus would have every
opportunity of facilitating their inquiries for their uncle.

The mass was an ornate one, though not more so than they were
accustomed to at Beaulieu.  Ambrose had his book of devotions,
supplied by the good monks who had brought him up, and old Mrs.
Headley carried something of the same kind; but these did not
necessarily follow the ritual, and neither quiet nor attention was
regarded as requisite in "hearing mass."  Dennet, unchecked, was
exchanging flowers from her Sunday posy with another little girl,
and with hooded fingers carrying on in all innocence the satirical
pantomime of Father Francis and Sister Catharine; and even Master
Headley himself exchanged remarks with his friends, and returned
greetings from burgesses and their wives while the celebrant
priest's voice droned on, and the choir responded--the peals of the
organ in the Minster above coming in at inappropriate moments, for
there they were in a different part of High Mass using the Liturgy
peculiar to St. Paul's.

Thinking of last week at Beaulieu, Ambrose knelt meantime with his
head buried in his hands, in an absorption of feeling that was not
perhaps wholly devout, but which at any rate looked more like
devotion than the demeanour of any one around.  When the Ite missa
est was pronounced, and all rose up, Stephen touched him and he
rose, looking about, bewildered.

"So please you, young sir, I can show you another sort of thing by
and by," said in his ear Tibble Steelman, who had come in late, and
marked his attitude.

They went up from St. Faith's in a flood of talk, with all manner of
people welcoming Master Headley after his journey, and thence came
back to dinner which was set out in the hall very soon after their
return from church.  Quite guests enough were there on this occasion
to fill all the chairs, and Master Headley intimated to Giles that
he must begin his duties at table as an apprentice, under the
tuition of the senior, a tall young fellow of nineteen, by name
Edmund Burgess.  He looked greatly injured and discomfited, above
all when he saw his two travelling companions seated at the table--
though far lower than the night before; nor would he stir from where
he was standing against the wall to do the slightest service,
although Edmund admonished him sharply that unless he bestirred
himself it would be the worse for him.

When the meal was over, and grace had been said, the boards were
removed from their trestles, and the elders drew round the small
table in the window with a flagon of sack and a plate of wastel
bread in their midst to continue their discussion of weighty Town
Council matters.  Every one was free to make holiday, and Edmund
Burgess good-naturedly invited the strangers to come to Mile End,
where there was to be shooting at the butts, and a match at
singlestick was to come off between Kit Smallbones and another
giant, who was regarded as the champion of the brewer's craft.

Stephen was nothing loth, especially if he might take his own
crossbow; but Ambrose never had much turn for these pastimes and was
in no mood for them.  The familiar associations of the mass had
brought the grief of orphanhood, homelessness, and uncertainty upon
him with the more force.  His spirit yearned after his father, and
his heart was sick for his forest home.  Moreover, there was the
duty incumbent on a good son of saying his prayers for the repose of
his father's soul.  He hinted as much to Stephen, who, boy-like,
answered, "Oh, we'll see to that when we get into my Lord of York's
house.  Masses must be plenty there.  And I must see Smallbones
floor the brewer."

Ambrose could trust his brother under the care of Edmund Burgess,
and resolved on a double amount of repetitions of the appointed
intercessions for the departed.

He was watching the party of youths set off, all except Giles
Headley, who sulkily refused the invitations, betook himself to a
window and sat drumming on the glass, while Ambrose stood leaning on
the dragon balustrade, with his eyes dreamily following the merry
lads out at the gateway.

"You are not for such gear, sir," said a voice at his ear, and he
saw the scathed face of Tibble Steelman beside him.

"Never greatly so, Tibble," answered Ambrose.  "And my heart is too
heavy for it now."

"Ay, ay, sir.  So I thought when I saw you in St. Faith's.  I have
known what it was to lose a good father in my time."

Ambrose held out his hand.  It was the first really sympathetic word
he had heard since he had left Nurse Joan.

"'Tis the week's mind of his burial," he said, half choked with
tears.  "Where shall I find a quiet church where I may say his De
profundis in peace?"

"Mayhap," returned Tibble, "the chapel in the Pardon churchyard
would serve your turn.  'Tis not greatly resorted to when mass time
is over, when there's no funeral in hand, and I oft go there to read
my book in quiet on a Sunday afternoon.  And then, if 'tis your
will, I will take you to what to my mind is the best healing for a
sore heart."

"Nurse Joan was wont to say the best for that was a sight of the
true Cross, as she once beheld it at Holy Rood church at
Southampton," said Ambrose.

"And so it is, lad, so it is," said Tibble, with a strange light on
his distorted features.

So they went forth together, while Giles again hugged himself in his
doleful conceit, marvelling how a youth of birth and nurture could
walk the streets on a Sunday with a scarecrow such as that!

The hour was still early, there was a whole summer afternoon before
them; and Tibble, seeing how much his young companion was struck
with the grand vista of church towers and spires, gave him their
names as they stood, though coupling them with short dry comments on
the way in which their priests too often perverted them.

The Cheap was then still in great part an open space, where boys
were playing, and a tumbler was attracting many spectators; while
the ballad-singer of yesterday had again a large audience, who
laughed loudly at every coarse jest broken upon mass-priests and
friars.

Ambrose was horrified at the stave that met his ears, and asked how
such profanity could be allowed.  Tibble shrugged his shoulders, and
cited the old saying, "The nearer the church"--adding, "Truth hath a
voice, and will out."

"But surely this is not the truth?"

"'Tis mighty like it, sir, though it might be spoken in a more
seemly fashion."

"What's this?" demanded Ambrose.  "'Tis a noble house."

"That's the Bishop's palace, sir--a man that hath much to answer
for."

"Liveth he so ill a life then?"

"Not so.  He is no scandalous liver, but he would fain stifle all
the voices that call for better things.  Ay, you look back at yon
ballad-monger!  Great folk despise the like of him, never guessing
at the power there may be in such ribald stuff; while they would
fain silence that which might turn men from their evil ways while
yet there is time."

Tibble muttered this to himself, unheeded by Ambrose, and then
presently crossing the church-yard, where a grave was being filled
up, with numerous idle children around it, he conducted the youth
into a curious little chapel, empty now, but with the Host enthroned
above the altar, and the trestles on which the bier had rested still
standing in the narrow nave.

It was intensely still and cool, a fit place indeed for Ambrose's
filial devotions, while Tibble settled himself on the step, took out
a little black book, and became absorbed.  Ambrose's Latin
scholarship enabled him to comprehend the language of the round of
devotions he was rehearsing for the benefit of his father's soul;
but there was much repetition in them, and he had been so trained as
to believe their correct recital was much more important than
attention to their spirit, and thus, while his hands held his
rosary, his eyes were fixed upon the walls where was depicted the
Dance of Death.  In terrible repetition, the artist had aimed at
depicting every rank or class in life as alike the prey of the
grisly phantom.  Triple-crowned pope, scarlet-hatted cardinal,
mitred prelate, priests, monks, and friars of every degree;
emperors, kings, princes, nobles, knights, squires, yeomen, every
sort of trade, soldiers of all kinds, beggars, even thieves and
murderers, and, in like manner, ladies of every degree, from the
queen and the abbess, down to the starving beggar, were each
represented as grappled with, and carried off by the crowned
skeleton.  There was no truckling to greatness.  The bishop and
abbot writhed and struggled in the grasp of Death, while the miser
clutched at his gold, and if there were some nuns, and some poor
ploughmen who willingly clasped his bony fingers and obeyed his
summons joyfully, there were countesses and prioresses who tried to
beat him off, or implored him to wait.  The infant smiled in his
arms, but the middle-aged fought against his scythe.

The contemplation had a most depressing effect on the boy, whose
heart was still sore for his father.  After the sudden shock of such
a loss, the monotonous repetition of the snatching away of all
alike, in the midst of their characteristic worldly employments, and
the anguish and hopeless resistance of most of them, struck him to
the heart.  He moved between each bead to a fresh group; staring at
it with fixed gaze, while his lips moved in the unconscious hope of
something consoling; till at last, hearing some uncontrollable sobs,
Tibble Steelman rose and found him crouching rather than kneeling
before the figure of an emaciated hermit, who was greeting the
summons of the King of Terrors, with crucifix pressed to his breast,
rapt countenance and outstretched arms, seeing only the Angel who
hovered above.  After some minutes of bitter weeping, which choked
his utterance, Ambrose, feeling a friendly hand on his shoulder,
exclaimed in a voice broken by sobs, "Oh, tell me, where may I go to
become an anchorite!  There's no other safety!  I'll give all my
portion, and spend all my time in prayer for my father and the other
poor souls in purgatory."

Two centuries earlier, nay, even one, Ambrose would have been
encouraged to follow out his purpose.  As it was, Tibble gave a
little dry cough and said, "Come along with me, sir, and I'll show
you another sort of way."

"I want no entertainment!" said Ambrose, "I should feel only as if
he," pointing to the phantom, "were at hand, clutching me with his
deadly claw," and he looked over his shoulder with a shudder.

There was a box by the door to receive alms for masses on behalf of
the souls in purgatory, and here he halted and felt for the pouch at
his girdle, to pour in all the contents; but Steelman said, "Hold,
sir, are you free to dispose of your brother's share, you who are
purse-bearer for both?"

"I would fain hold my brother to the only path of safety."

Again Tibble gave his dry cough, but added, "He is not in the path
of safety who bestows that which is not his own but is held in
trust.  I were foully to blame if I let this grim portrayal so work
on you as to lead you to beggar not only yourself, but your brother,
with no consent of his."

For Tibble was no impulsive Italian, but a sober-minded Englishman
of sturdy good sense, and Ambrose was reasonable enough to listen
and only drop in a few groats which he knew to be his own.

At the same moment, a church bell was heard, the tone of which
Steelman evidently distinguished from all the others, and he led the
way out of the Pardon churchyard, over the space in front of St.
Paul's.  Many persons were taking the same route; citizens in gowns
and gold or silver chains, their wives in tall pointed hats;
craftsmen, black-gowned scholarly men with fur caps, but there was a
much more scanty proportion of priests, monks or friars, than was
usual in any popular assemblage.  Many of the better class of women
carried folding stools, or had them carried by their servants, as if
they expected to sit and wait.

"Is there a procession toward? or a relic to be displayed?" asked
Ambrose, trying to recollect whose feast-day it might be.

Tibble screwed up his mouth in an extraordinary smile as he said,
"Relic quotha? yea, the soothest relic there be of the Lord and
Master of us all."

"Methought the true Cross was always displayed on the High Altar,"
said Ambrose, as all turned to a side aisle of the noble nave.

"Rather say hidden," muttered Tibble.  "Thou shalt have it
displayed, young sir, but neither in wood nor gilded shrine.  See,
here he comes who setteth it forth."

From the choir came, attended by half a dozen clergy, a small, pale
man, in the ordinary dress of a priest, with a square cap on his
head.  He looked spare, sickly, and wrinkled, but the furrows traced
lines of sweetness, his mouth was wonderfully gentle, and there was
a keen brightness about his clear grey eye.  Every one rose and made
obeisance as he passed along to the stone stair leading to a pulpit
projecting from one of the columns.

Ambrose saw what was coming, though he had only twice before heard
preaching.  The children of the ante-reformation were not called
upon to hear sermons; and the few exhortations given in Lent to the
monks of Beaulieu were so exclusively for the religious that
seculars were not invited to them.  So that Ambrose had only once
heard a weary and heavy discourse there plentifully garnished with
Latin; and once he had stood among the throng at a wake at
Millbrook, and heard a begging friar recommend the purchase of
briefs of indulgence and the daily repetition of the Ave Maria by a
series of extraordinary miracles for the rescue of desperate
sinners, related so jocosely as to keep the crowd in a roar of
laughter.  He had laughed with the rest, but he could not imagine
his guide, with the stern, grave eyebrows, writhen features and
earnest, ironical tone, covering--as even he could detect--the
deepest feeling, enjoying such broad sallies as tickled the slow
merriment of village clowns and forest deer-stealers.

All stood for a moment while the Paternoster was repeated.  Then the
owners of stools sat down on them, some leant on adjacent pillars,
others curled themselves on the floor, but most remained on their
feet as unwilling to miss a word, and of these were Tibble Steelman
and his companion.

Omnis qui facit peccatum, servus est peccati, followed by the
rendering in English, "Whosoever doeth sin is sin's bond thrall."
The words answered well to the ghastly delineations that seemed
stamped on Ambrose's brain and which followed him about into the
nave, so that he felt himself in the grasp of the cruel fiend, and
almost expected to feel the skeleton claw of Death about to hand him
over to torment.  He expected the consolation of hearing that a
daily "Hail Mary," persevered in through the foulest life, would
obtain that beams should be arrested in their fall, ships fail to
sink, cords to hang, till such confession had been made as should
insure ultimate salvation, after such a proportion of the flames of
purgatory as masses and prayers might not mitigate.

But his attention was soon caught.  Sinfulness stood before him not
as the liability to penalty for transgressing an arbitrary rule, but
as a taint to the entire being, mastering the will, perverting the
senses, forging fetters out of habit, so as to be a loathsome horror
paralysing and enchaining the whole being and making it into the
likeness of him who brought sin and death into the world.  The
horror seemed to grow on Ambrose, as his boyish faults and errors
rushed on his mind, and he felt pervaded by the contagion of the
pestilence, abhorrent even to himself.  But behold, what was he
hearing now?  "The bond thrall abideth not in the house for ever,
but the Son abideth ever.  Si ergo Filius liberavit, vere liberi
eritis."  "If the Son should make you free, then are ye free
indeed."  And for the first time was the true liberty of the
redeemed soul comprehensibly proclaimed to the young spirit that had
begun to yearn for something beyond the outside.  Light began to
shine through the outward ordinances; the Church; the world, life,
and death, were revealed as something absolutely new; a redeeming,
cleansing, sanctifying power was made known, and seemed to inspire
him with a new life, joy, and hope.  He was no longer feeling
himself necessarily crushed by the fetters of death, or only
delivered from absolute peril by a mechanism that had lost its
heart, but he could enter into the glorious liberty of the sons of
God, in process of being saved, not in sin but FROM sin.

It was an era in his life, and Tibble heard him sobbing, but with
very different sobs from those in the Pardon chapel.  When it was
over, and the blessing given, Ambrose looked up from the hands which
had covered his face with a new radiance in his eyes, and drew a
long breath.  Tibble saw that he was like one in another world, and
gently led him away.

"Who is he?  What is he?  Is he an angel from Heaven?" demanded the
boy, a little wildly, as they neared the southern door.

"If an angel be a messenger of God, I trow he is one," said Tibble.
"But men call him Dr. Colet.  He is Dean of St. Paul's Minster, and
dwelleth in the house you see below there."

"And are such words as these to be heard every Sunday?"

"On most Sundays doth he preach here in the nave to all sorts of
folk."

"I must--I must hear it again!" exclaimed Ambrose.

"Ay, ay," said Tibble, regarding him with a well-pleased face.  "You
are one with whom it works."

"Every Sunday!" repeated Ambrose.  "Why do not all--your master and
all these," pointing to the holiday crowds going to and fro--"why do
they not all come to listen?"

"Master doth come by times," said Tibble, in the tone of irony that
was hard to understand.  "He owneth the dean as a rare preacher."

Ambrose did not try to understand.  He exclaimed again, panting as
if his thoughts were too strong for his words--"Lo you, that
preacher--dean call ye him?--putteth a soul into what hath hitherto
been to me but a dead and empty framework."

Tibble held out his hand almost unconsciously, and Ambrose pressed
it.  Man and boy, alike they had felt the electric current of that
truth, which, suppressed and ignored among man's inventions, was
coming as a new revelation to many, and was already beginning to
convulse the Church and the world.

Ambrose's mind was made up on one point.  Whatever he did, and
wherever he went, he felt the doctrine he had just heard as needful
to him as vital air, and he must be within reach of it.  This, and
not the hermit's cell, was what his instinct craved.  He had always
been a studious, scholarly boy, supposed to be marked out for a
clerical life, because a book was more to him than a bow, and he had
been easily trained in good habits and practices of devotion; but
all in a childish manner, without going beyond simple receptiveness,
until the experiences of the last week had made a man of him, or
more truly, the Pardon chapel and Dean Colet's sermon had made him a
new being, with the realities of the inner life opened before him.

His present feeling was relief from the hideous load he had felt
while dwelling on the Dance of Death, and therewith general goodwill
to all men, which found its first issue in compassion for Giles
Headley, whom he found on his return seated on the steps--moody and
miserable.

"Would that you had been with us," said Ambrose, sitting down beside
him on the step.  "Never have I heard such words as to-day."

"I would not be seen in the street with that scarecrow," murmured
Giles.  "If my mother could have guessed that he was to be set over
me, I had never come here."

"Surely you knew that he was foreman."

"Yea, but not that I should be under him--I whom old Giles vowed
should be as his own son--I that am to wed yon little brown moppet,
and be master here!  So, forsooth," he said, "now he treats me like
any common low-bred prentice."

"Nay," said Ambrose, "an if you were his son, he would still make
you serve.  It's the way with all craftsmen--yea and with
gentlemen's sons also.  They must be pages and squires ere they can
be knights."

"It never was the way at home.  I was only bound prentice to my
father for the name of the thing, that I might have the freedom of
the city, and become head of our house."

"But how could you be a wise master without learning the craft?"

"What are journeymen for?" demanded the lad.  "Had I known how Giles
Headley meant to serve me, he might have gone whistle for a husband
for his wench.  I would have ridden in my Lady of Salisbury's
train."

"You might have had rougher usage there than here," said Ambrose.
"Master Headley lays nothing on you but what he has himself proved.
I would I could see you make the best of so happy a home."

"Ay, that's all very well for you, who are certain of a great man's
house."

"Would that I were certified that my brother would be as well off as
you, if you did but know it," said Ambrose.  "Ha! here come the
dishes!  'Tis supper time come on us unawares, and Stephen not
returned from Mile End!"

Punctuality was not, however, exacted on these summer Sunday
evenings, when practice with the bow and other athletic sports were
enjoined by Government, and, moreover, the youths were with so
trustworthy a member of the household as Kit Smallbones.

Sundry City magnates had come to supper with Master Headley, and
whether it were the effect of Ambrose's counsel, or of the example
of a handsome lad who had come with his father, one of the
worshipful guild of Merchant Taylors, Giles did vouchsafe to bestir
himself in waiting, and in consideration of the effort it must have
cost him, old Mrs. Headley and her son did not take notice of his
blunders, but only Dennet fell into a violent fit of laughter, when
he presented the stately alderman with a nutmeg under the impression
that it was an overgrown peppercorn.  She suppressed her mirth as
well as she could, poor little thing, for it was a great offence in
good manners, but she was detected, and, only child as she was, the
consequence was the being banished from the table and sent to bed.

But when, after supper was over, Ambrose went out to see if there
were any signs of the return of Stephen and the rest, he found the
little maiden curled up in the gallery with her kitten in her arms.

"Nay!" she said, in a spoilt-child tone, "I'm not going to bed
before my time for laughing at that great oaf!  Nurse Alice says he
is to wed me, but I won't have him!  I like the pretty boy who had
the good dog and saved father, and I like you, Master Ambrose.  Sit
down by me and tell me the story over again, and we shall see Kit
Smallbones come home.  I know he'll have beaten the brewer's
fellow."

Before Ambrose had decided whether thus far to abet rebellion, she
jumped up and cried:  "Oh, I see Kit!  He's got my ribbon!  He has
won the match!"

And down she rushed, quite oblivious of her disgrace, and Ambrose
presently saw her uplifted in Kit Smallbones' brawny arms to utter
her congratulations.

Stephen was equally excited.  His head was full of Kit Smallbones'
exploits, and of the marvels of the sports he had witnessed and
joined in with fair success.  He had thought Londoners poor
effeminate creatures, but he found that these youths preparing for
the trained bands understood all sorts of martial exercises far
better than any of his forest acquaintance, save perhaps the hitting
of a mark.  He was half wild with a boy's enthusiasm for Kit
Smallbones and Edmund Burgess, and when, after eating the supper
that had been reserved for the late comers, he and his brother
repaired to their own chamber, his tongue ran on in description of
the feats he had witnessed and his hopes of emulating them, since he
understood that Archbishop as was my Lord of York, there was a tilt-
yard at York House.  Ambrose, equally full of his new feelings,
essayed to make his brother a sharer in them, but Stephen entirely
failed to understand more than that his book-worm brother had heard
something that delighted him in his own line of scholarship, from
which Stephen had happily escaped a year ago!



CHAPTER VII.  YORK HOUSE



"Then hath he servants five or six score,
Some behind and some before;
A marvellous great company
Of which are lords and gentlemen,
With many grooms and yeomen
And also knaves among them."

Contemporary Poem on Wolsey.


Early were hammers ringing on anvils in the Dragon Court, and all
was activity.  Master Headley was giving his orders to Kit
Smallbones before setting forth to take the Duke of Buckingham's
commands; Giles Headley, very much disgusted, was being invested
with a leathern apron, and entrusted to Edmund Burgess to learn
those primary arts of furbishing which, but for his mother's vanity
and his father's weakness, he would have practised four years
sooner.  Tibble Steelman was superintending the arrangement of half
a dozen corslets, which were to be carried by three stout porters,
under his guidance, to what is now Whitehall, then the residence of
the Archbishop of York, the king's prime adviser, Thomas Wolsey.

"Look you, Tib," said the kind-hearted armourer, "if those lads find
not their kinsman, or find him not what they look for, bring them
back hither, I cannot have them cast adrift.  They are good and
brave youths, and I owe a life to them."

Tibble nodded entire assent, but when the boys appeared in their
mourning suits, with their bundles on their backs, they were sent
back again to put on their forest green, Master Headley explaining
that it was reckoned ill-omened, if not insulting, to appear before
any great personage in black, unless to enhance some petition
directly addressed to himself.  He also bade them leave their
fardels behind, as, if they tarried at York House, these could be
easily sent after them.

They obeyed--even Stephen doing so with more alacrity than he had
hitherto shown to Master Headley's behests; for now that the time
for departure had come, he was really sorry to leave the armourer's
household.  Edmund Burgess had been very good-natured to the raw
country lad, and Kit Smallbones was, in his eyes, an Ascapart in
strength, and a Bevis in prowess and kindliness.  Mistress Headley
too had been kind to the orphan lads, and these two days had given a
feeling of being at home at the Dragon.  When Giles wished them a
moody farewell, and wished he were going with them, Stephen
returned, "Ah! you don't know when you are well off."

Little Dennet came running down after them with two pinks in her
hands.  "Here's a sop-in-wine for a token for each of you young
gentlemen," she cried, "for you came to help father, and I would you
were going to stay and wed me instead of Giles."

"What, both of us, little maid?" said Ambrose, laughing, as he
stooped to receive the kiss her rosy lips tendered to him.

"Not but what she would have royal example," muttered Tibble aside.

Dennet put her head on one side, as considering.  "Nay, not both;
but you are gentle and courteous, and he is brave and gallant--and
Giles there is moody and glum, and can do nought."

"Ah! you will see what a gallant fellow Giles can be when thou hast
cured him of his home-sickness by being good to him," said Ambrose,
sorry for the youth in the universal laughter at the child's plain
speaking.

And thus the lads left the Dragon, amid friendly farewells.  Ambrose
looked up at the tall spire of St. Paul's with a strong
determination that he would never put himself out of reach of such
words as he had there drunk in, and which were indeed spirit and
life to him.

Tibble took them down to the St. Paul's stairs on the river, where
at his whistle a wherry was instantly brought to transport them to
York stairs, only one of the smiths going any further in charge of
the corslets.  Very lovely was their voyage in the brilliant summer
morning, as the glittering water reflected in broken ripples church
spire, convent garden, and stately house.  Here rows of elm-trees
made a cool walk by the river side, there strawberry beds sloped
down the Strand, and now and then the hooded figures of nuns might
be seen gathering the fruit.  There, rose the round church of the
Temple, and the beautiful gardens surrounding the buildings, half
monastic, half military, and already inhabited by lawyers.  From a
barge at the Temple stairs a legal personage descended, with a
square beard, and open, benevolent, shrewd face, before whom Tibble
removed his cap with eagerness, saying to Ambrose, "Yonder is Master
More, a close friend of the dean's, a good and wise man, and forward
in every good work."

Thus did they arrive at York House.  Workmen were busy on some
portions of it, but it was inhabited by the great Archbishop, the
king's chief adviser.  The approach of the boat seemed to be
instantly notified, as it drew near the stone steps giving entrance
to the gardens, with an avenue of trees leading up to the principal
entrance.

Four or five yeomen ran down the steps, calling out to Tibble that
their corslets had tarried a long time, and that Sir Thomas Drury
had been storming for him to get his tilting armour into order.

Tibble followed the man who had undertaken to conduct him through a
path that led to the offices of the great house, bidding the boys
keep with him, and asking for their uncle Master Harry Randall.

The yeoman shook his head.  He knew no such person in the household,
and did not think there ever had been such.  Sir Thomas Drury was
found in the stable court, trying the paces of the horse he intended
to use in the approaching joust.  "Ha! old Wry-mouth," he cried,
"welcome at last!  I must have my new device damasked on my shield.
Come hither, and I'll show it thee."

Private rooms were seldom enjoyed, even by knights and gentlemen, in
such a household, and Sir Thomas could only conduct Tibble to the
armoury, where numerous suits of armour hung on blocks, presenting
the semblance of armed men.  The knight, a good-looking personage,
expatiated much on the device he wished to dedicate to his lady-
love, a pierced heart with a forget-me-not in the midst, and it was
not until the directions were finished that Tibble ventured to
mention the inquiry for Randall.

"I wot of no such fellow," returned Sir Thomas, "you had best go to
the comptroller, who keeps all the names."  Tibble had to go to this
functionary at any rate, to obtain an order for payment for the
corslets he had brought home.  Ambrose and Stephen followed him
across an enormous hall, where three long tables were being laid for
dinner.

The comptroller of the household, an esquire of good birth, with a
stiff little ruff round his neck, sat in a sort of office inclosed
by panels at the end of the hall.  He made an entry of Tibble's
account in a big book, and sent a message to the cofferer to bring
the amount.  Then Tibble again put his question on behalf of the two
young foresters, and the comptroller shook his head.  He did not
know the name.  "Was the gentleman" (he chose that word as he looked
at the boys) "layman or clerk?"  "Layman, certainly," said Ambrose,
somewhat dismayed to find how little, on interrogation, he really
knew.

"Was he a yeoman of the guard, or in attendance on one of my lord's
nobles in waiting?"

"We thought he had been a yeoman," said Ambrose.

"See," said the comptroller, stimulated by a fee administered by
Tibble, "'tis just dinner time, and I must go to attend on my Lord
Archbishop; but do you, Tibble, sit down with these striplings to
dinner, and then I will cast my eye over the books, and see if I can
find any such name.  What, hast not time?  None ever quits my lord's
without breaking his fast."

Tibble had no doubt that his master would be willing that he should
give up his time for this purpose, so he accepted the invitation.
The tables were by this time nearly covered, but all stood waiting,
for there flowed in from the great doorway of the hall a gorgeous
train--first, a man bearing the double archiepiscopal cross of York,
fashioned in silver, and thick with gems--then, with lofty mitre
enriched with pearls and jewels, and with flowing violet lace-
covered robes came the sturdy square-faced ruddy prelate, who was
then the chief influence in England, and after him two glittering
ranks of priests in square caps and richly embroidered copes, all in
accordant colours.  They were returning, as a yeoman told Tibble,
from some great ecclesiastical ceremony, and dinner would be served
instantly.

"That for which Ralf Bowyer lives!" said a voice close by, "He would
fain that the dial's hands were Marie bones, the face blancmange,
wherein the figures should be grapes of Corinth!"

Stephen looked round and saw a man close beside him in what he knew
at once to be the garb of a jester.  A tall scarlet velvet cap, with
three peaks, bound with gold braid, and each surmounted with a
little gilded bell, crowned his head, a small crimson ridge to
indicate the cock's comb running along the front.  His jerkin and
hose were of motley, the left arm and right leg being blue, their
opposites, orange tawny, while the nether stocks and shoes were in
like manner black and scarlet counterchanged.  And yet, somehow,
whether from the way of wearing it, or from the effect of the gold
embroidery meandering over all, the effect was not distressing, but
more like that of a gorgeous bird.  The figure was tall, lithe, and
active, the brown ruddy face had none of the blank stare of vacant
idiocy, but was full of twinkling merriment, the black eyes laughed
gaily, and perhaps only so clearsighted and shrewd an observer as
Tibble would have detected a weakness of purpose about the mouth.

There was a roar of laughter at the gibe, as indeed there was at
whatever was uttered by the man whose profession was to make mirth.

"Thou likest thy food well enough thyself, quipsome one," muttered
Ralf.

"Hast found one who doth not, Ralf?  Then should he have a free gift
of my bauble," responded the jester, shaking on high that badge,
surmounted with the golden head of an ass, and jingling with bells.
"How now, friend Wry-mouth?  'Tis long since thou wert here!  This
house hath well-nigh been forced to its ghostly weapons for lack of
thy substantial ones.  Where hast thou been?"

"At Salisbury, good Merryman."

"Have the Wilts men raked the moon yet out of the pond?  Did they
lend thee their rake, Tib, that thou hast raked up a couple of green
Forest palmer worms, or be they the sons of the man in the moon,
raked out and all astray?"

"Mayhap, for we met them with dog and bush," said Tibble, "and they
dropped as from the moon to save my poor master from the robbers on
Bagshot heath!  Come now, mine honest fellow, aid me to rake, as
thou sayest, this same household.  They are come up from the Forest,
to seek out their uncle, one Randall, who they have heard to be in
this meine.  Knowest thou such a fellow?"

"To seek a spider in a stubble-field!  Truly he needs my bauble who
sent them on such an errand," said the jester, rather slowly, as if
to take time for consideration.  "What's your name, my Forest
flies?"

"Birkenholt, sir," answered Ambrose, "but our uncle is Harry
Randall."

"Here's fools enow to take away mine office," was the reply.
"Here's a couple of lads would leave the greenwood and the free oaks
and beeches, for this stinking, plague-smitten London."

"We'd not have quitted it could we have tarried at home," began
Ambrose; but at that moment there was a sudden commotion, a
trampling of horses was heard outside, a loud imperious voice
demanded, "Is my Lord Archbishop within?" a whisper ran round, "the
King," and there entered the hall with hasty steps, a figure never
to be forgotten, clad in a hunting dress of green velvet embroidered
with gold, with a golden hunting horn slung round his neck.

Henry VIII. was then in the splendid prime of his youth, in his
twenty-seventh year, and in the eyes, not only of his own subjects,
but of all others, the very type of a true king of men.  Tall, and
as yet of perfect form for strength, agility, and grace; his
features were of the beautiful straight Plantagenet type, and his
complexion of purely fair rosiness, his large well-opened blue eyes
full at once of frankness and keenness, and the short golden beard
that fringed his square chin giving the manly air that otherwise
might have seemed wanting to the feminine tinting of his regular
lineaments.  All caps were instantly doffed save the little bonnet
with one drooping feather that covered his short, curled, yellow
hair; and the Earl of Derby, who was at the head of Wolsey's
retainers, made haste, bowing to the ground, to assure him that my
Lord Archbishop was but doffing his robes, and would be with his
Grace instantly.  Would his Grace vouchsafe to come on to the privy
chamber where the dinner was spread?

At the same moment Quipsome Hal sprang forward, exclaiming, "How
now, brother and namesake?  Wherefore this coil?  Hath cloth of gold
wearied yet of cloth of frieze?  Is she willing to own her right to
this?" as he held out his bauble.

"Holla, old Blister! art thou there?" said the King, good-
humouredly.  "What! knowest not that we are to have such a wedding
as will be a sight for sore eyes!"

"Sore! that's well said, friend Hal.  Thou art making progress in
mine art!  Sore be the eyes wherein thou wouldst throw dust."

Again the King laughed, for every one knew that his sister Mary had
secretly been married to the Duke of Suffolk for the last two
months, and that this public marriage and the tournament that was to
follow were only for the sake of appearances.  He laid his hand
good-naturedly on the jester's shoulder as he walked up the hall
towards the Archbishop's private apartments, but the voices of both
were loud pitched, and bits of the further conversation could be
picked up.  "Weddings are rife in your family," said the jester,
"none of you get weary of fitting on the noose.  What, thou thyself,
Hal?  Ay, thou hast not caught the contagion yet!  Now ye gods
forefend!  If thou hast the chance, thou'lt have it strong."

Therewith the Archbishop, in his purple robes, appeared in the
archway at the other end of the hall, the King joined him, and still
followed by the jester, they both vanished.  It was presently made
known that the King was about to dine there, and that all were to
sit down to eat.  The King dined alone with the Archbishop as his
host; the two noblemen who had formed his suite joined the first
table in the higher hall; the knights that of the steward of the
household, who was of knightly degree, and with whom the superior
clergy of the household ate; and the grooms found their places among
the vast array of yeomen and serving-men of all kinds with whom
Tibble and his two young companions had to eat.  A week ago, Stephen
would have contemned the idea of being classed with serving-men and
grooms, but by this time he was quite bewildered, and anxious enough
to be thankful to keep near a familiar face on any terms, and to
feel as if Tibble were an old friend, though he had only known him
for five days.

Why the King had come had not transpired, but there was a whisper
that despatches from Scotland were concerned in it.  The meal was a
lengthy one, but at last the King's horses were ordered, and
presently Henry came forth, with his arm familiarly linked in that
of the Archbishop, whose horse had likewise been made ready that he
might accompany the King back to Westminster.  The jester was close
at hand, and as a parting shaft he observed, while the King mounted
his horse, "Friend Hal! give my brotherly commendations to our
Madge, and tell her that one who weds Anguish cannot choose but cry
out."

Wherewith, affecting to expect a stroke from the King's whip, he
doubled himself up, performed the contortion now called turning a
coachwheel, then, recovering himself, put his hands on his hips and
danced wildly on the steps; while Henry, shaking his whip at him,
laughed at the only too obvious pun, for Anguish was the English
version of Angus, the title of Queen Margaret's second husband, and
it was her complaints that had brought him to his counsellor.

The jester then, much to the annoyance of the two boys, thought
proper to follow them to the office of the comptroller, and as that
dignitary read out from his books the name of every Henry, and of
all the varieties of Ralf and Randolf among the hundred and eighty
persons composing the household, he kept on making comments.  "Harry
Hempseed, clerk to the kitchen; ay, Hempseed will serve his turn one
of these days.  Walter Randall, groom of the chamber; ah, ha! my
lads, if you want a generous uncle who will look after you well,
there is your man!  He'll give you the shakings of the napery for
largesse, and when he is in an open-handed mood, will let you lie on
the rushes that have served the hall.  Harry of Lambeth, yeoman of
the stable.  He will make you free of all the taverns in Eastchepe."

And so on, accompanying each remark with a pantomime mimicry of the
air and gesture of the individual.  He showed in a second the
contortions of Harry Weston in drawing the bow, and in another the
grimaces of Henry Hope, the choir man, in producing bass notes, or
the swelling majesty of Randall Porcher, the cross-bearer, till it
really seemed as if he had shown off the humours of at least a third
of the enormous household.  Stephen had laughed at first, but as
failure after failure occurred, the antics began to weary even him,
and seem unkind and ridiculous as hope ebbed away, and the appalling
idea began to grow on him of being cast loose on London without a
friend or protector.  Ambrose felt almost despairing as he heard in
vain the last name.  He would almost have been willing to own Hal
the scullion, and his hopes rose when he heard of Hodge Randolph,
the falconer, but alas, that same Hodge came from Yorkshire.

"And mine uncle was from the New Forest in Hampshire," he said.

"Maybe he went by the name of Shirley," added Stephen, "'tis where
his home was."

But the comptroller, unwilling to begin a fresh search, replied at
once that the only Shirley in the household was a noble esquire of
the Warwickshire family.

"You must e'en come back with me, young masters," said Tibble, "and
see what my master can do for you."

"Stay a bit," said the fool.  "Harry of Shirley!  Harry of Shirley!
Methinks I could help you to the man, if so be as you will deem him
worth the finding," he added, suddenly turning upside down, and
looking at them standing on the palms of his hands, with an
indescribable leer of drollery, which in a moment dashed all the
hopes with which they had turned to him.  "Should you know this
minks of yours?" he added.

"I think I should," said Ambrose.  "I remember best how he used to
carry me on his shoulder to cull mistletoe for Christmas."

"Ah, ha!  A proper fellow of his inches now, with yellow hair?"

"Nay," said Ambrose, "I mind that his hair was black, and his eyes
as black as sloes--or as thine own, Master Jester."

The jester tumbled over into a more extraordinary attitude than
before, while Stephen said -

"John was wont to twit us with being akin to Gipsy Hal."

"I mean a man sad and grave as the monks of Beaulieu," said the
jester.

"He!" they both cried.  "No, indeed!  He was foremost in all
sports."  "Ah!" cried Stephen, "mind you not, Ambrose, his teaching
us leap-frog, and aye leaping over one of us himself, with the other
in his arms?"

"Ah! sadly changed, sadly changed," said the jester, standing
upright, with a most mournful countenance.  "Maybe you'd not thank
me if I showed him to you, young sirs, that is, if he be the man."

"Nay! is he in need, or distress?" cried the brothers.

"Poor Hal!" returned the fool, shaking his head with mournfulness in
his voice.

"Oh, take us to him, good--good jester," cried Ambrose.  "We are
young and strong.  We will work for him."

"What, a couple of lads like you, that have come to London seeking
for him to befriend you--deserving well my cap for that matter.
Will ye be guided to him, broken and soured--no more gamesome, but a
sickly old runagate?"

"Of course," cried Ambrose.  "He is our mother's brother.  We must
care for him."

"Master Headley will give us work, mayhap," said Stephen, turning to
Tibble.  "I could clean the furnaces."

"Ah, ha!  I see fools' caps must hang thick as beech masts in the
Forest," cried the fool, but his voice was husky, and he turned
suddenly round with his back to them, then cut three or four
extraordinary capers, after which he observed--"Well, young
gentlemen, I will see the man I mean, and if he be the same, and be
willing to own you for his nephews, he will meet you in the Temple
Gardens at six of the clock this evening, close to the rose-bush
with the flowers in my livery--motley red and white."

"But how shall we know him?"

"D'ye think a pair of green caterpillars like you can't be marked--
unless indeed the gardener crushes you for blighting his roses."
Wherewith the jester quitted the scene, walking on his hands, with
his legs in the air.

"Is he to be trusted?" asked Tibble of the comptroller.

"Assuredly," was the answer; "none hath better wit than Quipsome
Hal, when he chooseth to be in earnest.  In very deed, as I have
heard Sir Thomas More say, it needeth a wise man to be fool to my
Lord of York."



CHAPTER VIII.  QUIPSOME HAL



"The sweet and bitter fool
   Will presently appear,
The one in motley here
   The other found out there."

SHAKESPEARE.


There lay the quiet Temple Gardens, on the Thames bank, cut out in
formal walks, with flowers growing in the beds of the homely kinds
beloved by the English.  Musk roses, honeysuckle and virgin's bower,
climbed on the old grey walls; sops-in-wine, bluebottles, bachelor's
buttons, stars of Bethlehem and the like, filled the borders; May
thorns were in full sweet blossom; and near one another were the two
rose bushes, one damask and one white Provence, whence Somerset and
Warwick were said to have plucked their fatal badges; while on the
opposite side of a broad grass-plot was another bush, looked on as a
great curiosity of the best omen, where the roses were streaked with
alternate red and white, in honour, as it were, of the union of York
and Lancaster.

By this rose-tree stood the two young Birkenholts.  Edmund Burgess
having, by his master's desire, shown them the way, and passed them
in by a word and sign from his master, then retired unseen to a
distance to mark what became of them, they having promised also to
return and report of themselves to Master Headley.

They stood together earnestly watching for the coming of the uncle,
feeling quite uncertain whether to expect a frail old broken man, or
to find themselves absolutely deluded, and made game of by the
jester.

The gardens were nearly empty, for most people were sitting over
their supper-tables after the business of the day was over, and only
one or two figures in black gowns paced up and down in conversation.

"Come away, Ambrose," said Stephen at last.  "He only meant to make
fools of us!  Come, before he comes to gibe us for having heeded a
moment.  Come, I say--here's this man coming to ask us what we are
doing here."

For a tall, well-made, well-dressed personage in the black or sad
colour of a legal official, looking like a prosperous householder,
or superior artisan, was approaching them, some attendant, as the
boys concluded belonging to the Temple.  They expected to be turned
out, and Ambrose in an apologetic tone, began, "Sir, we were bidden
to meet a--a kinsman here."

"And even so am I," was the answer, in a grave, quiet tone, "or
rather to meet twain."

Ambrose looked up into a pair of dark eyes, and exclaimed "Stevie,
Stevie, 'tis he.  'Tis uncle Hal."

"Ay, 'tis all you're like to have for him," answered Harry Randall,
enfolding each in his embrace.  "Lad, how like thou art to my poor
sister!  And is she indeed gone--and your honest father too--and
none left at home but that hunks, little John?  How and when died
she?"

"Two years agone come Lammastide," answered Stephen.  "There was a
deadly creeping fever and ague through the Forest.  We two sickened,
and Ambrose was so like to die that Diggory went to the abbey for
the priest to housel and anneal him, but by the time Father Simon
came he was sound asleep, and soon was whole again.  But before we
were on our legs, our blessed mother took the disease, and she
passed away ere many days were over.  Then, though poor father took
not that sickness, he never was the same man again, and only twelve
days after last Pasch-tide he was taken with a fit and never spake
again."

Stephen was weeping by this time, and his uncle had a hand on his
shoulder, and with tears in his eyes, threw in ejaculations of pity
and affection.  Ambrose finished the narrative with a broken voice
indeed, but as one who had more self-command than his brother,
perhaps than his uncle, whose exclamations became bitter and angry
as he heard of the treatment the boys had experienced from their
half-brother, who, as he said, he had always known as a currish
mean-spirited churl, but scarce such as this.

"Nor do I think he would have been, save for his wife, Maud Pratt of
Hampton," said Ambrose.  "Nay, truly also, he deemed that we were
only within a day's journey of council from our uncle Richard at
Hyde."

"Richard Birkenholt was a sturdy old comrade!  Methinks he would
give Master Jack a piece of his mind."

"Alack, good uncle, we found him in his dotage, and the bursar of
Hyde made quick work with us, for fear, good Father Shoveller said,
that we were come to look after his corrody."

"Shoveller--what, a Shoveller of Cranbury?  How fell ye in with
him?"

Ambrose told the adventures of their journey, and Randall exclaimed
"By my bau--I mean by my faith--if ye have ill-luck in uncles, ye
have had good luck in friends."

"No ill-luck in thee, good, kind uncle," said Stephen, catching at
his hand with the sense of comfort that kindred blood gives.

"How wottest thou that, child?  Did not I--I mean did not Merryman
tell you, that mayhap ye would not be willing to own your uncle?"

"We deemed he was but jesting," said Stephen.  "Ah!"

For a sudden twinkle in the black eyes, an involuntary twist of the
muscles of the face, were a sudden revelation to him.  He clutched
hold of Ambrose with a sudden grasp; Ambrose too looked and recoiled
for a moment, while the colour spread over his face.

"Yes, lads.  Can you brook the thought!--Harry Randall is the poor
fool!"

Stephen, whose composure had already broken down, burst into tears
again, perhaps mostly at the downfall of all his own expectations
and glorifications of the kinsman about whom he had boasted.
Ambrose only exclaimed "O uncle, you must have been hard pressed."
For indeed the grave, almost melancholy man, who stood before them,
regarding them wistfully, had little in common with the lithe
tumbler full of absurdities whom they had left at York House.

"Even so, my good lad.  Thou art right in that," said he gravely.
"Harder than I trust will ever be the lot of you two, my sweet
Moll's sons.  She never guessed that I was come to this."

"O no," said Stephen.  "She always thought thou--thou hadst some
high preferment in--"

"And so I have," said Randall with something of his ordinary humour.
"There's no man dares to speak such plain truth to my lord--or for
that matter to King Harry himself, save his own Jack-a-Lee--and he,
being a fool of nature's own making, cannot use his chances, poor
rogue!  And so the poor lads came up to London hoping to find a
gallant captain who could bring them to high preferment, and found
nought but--Tom Fool!  I could find it in my heart to weep for them!
And so thou mindest clutching the mistletoe on nunk Hal's shoulder.
I warrant it groweth still on the crooked May bush?  And is old
Bobbin alive?"

They answered his questions, but still as if under a great shock,
and presently he said, as they paced up and down the garden walks,
"Ay, I have been sore bestead, and I'll tell you how it came about,
boys, and mayhap ye will pardon the poor fool, who would not own you
sooner, lest ye should come in for mockery ye have not learnt to
brook."  There was a sadness and pleading in his tone that touched
Ambrose, and he drew nearer to his uncle, who laid a hand on his
shoulder, and presently the other on that of Stephen, who shrank a
little at first, but submitted.  "Lads, I need not tell you why I
left fair Shirley and the good greenwood.  I was a worse fool then
than ever I have been since I wore the cap and bells, and if all had
been brought home to me, it might have brought your father and
mother into trouble--my sweet Moll who had done her best for me.  I
deemed, as you do now, that the way to fortune was open, but I found
no path before me, and I had tightened my belt many a time, and was
not much more than a bag of bones, when, by chance, I fell in with a
company of tumblers and gleemen.  I sang them the old hunting-song,
and they said I did it tunably, and, whereas they saw I could
already dance a hornpipe and turn a somersault passably well, the
leader of the troop, old Nat Fire-eater, took me on, and methinks he
did not repent--nor I neither--save when I sprained my foot and had
time to lie by and think.  We had plenty to fill our bellies and put
on our backs; we had welcome wherever we went, and the groats and
pennies rained into our caps.  I was Clown and Jack Pudding and
whatever served their turn, and the very name of Quipsome Hal drew
crowds.  Yea, 'twas a merry life!  Ay, I feel thee wince and shrink,
my lad; and so should I have shuddered when I was of thine age, and
hoped to come to better things."

"Methinks 'twere better than this present," said Stephen rather
gruffly.

"I had my reasons, boy," said Randall, speaking as if he were
pleading his cause with their father and mother rather than with two
such young lads.  "There was in our company an old man-at-arms who
played the lute and the rebeck, and sang ballads so long as hand and
voice served him, and with him went his grandchild, a fair and
honest little maiden, whom he kept so jealously apart that 'twas
long ere I knew of her following the company.  He had been a
franklin on my Lord of Warwick's lands, and had once been burnt out
by Queen Margaret's men, and just as things looked up again with
him, King Edward's folk ruined all again, and slew his two sons.
When great folk play the fool, small folk pay the scot, as I din
into his Grace's ears whenever I may.  A minion of the Duke of
Clarence got the steading, and poor old Martin Fulford was turned
out to shift as best he might.  One son he had left, and with him he
went to the Low Countries, where they would have done well had they
not been bitten by faith in the fellow Perkin Warbeck.  You've heard
of him?"

"Yea," said Ambrose; "the same who was taken out of sanctuary at
Beaulieu, and borne off to London.  Father said he was marvellous
like in the face to all the kings he had ever seen hunting in the
Forest."

"I know not; but to the day of his death old Martin swore that he
was a son of King Edward's, and they came home again with the men
the Duchess of Burgundy gave Perkin--came bag and baggage, for young
Fulford had wedded a fair Flemish wife, poor soul!  He left her with
his father nigh to Taunton ere the battle, and he was never heard of
more, but as he was one of the few men who knew how to fight, belike
he was slain.  Thus old Martin was left with the Flemish wife and
her little one on his hands, for whose sake he did what went against
him sorely, joined himself to this troop of jugglers and players, so
as to live by the minstrelsy he had learnt in better days, while his
daughter-in-law mended and made for the company and kept them in
smart and shining trim.  By the time I fell in with them his voice
was well-nigh gone, and his hand sorely shaking, but Fire-eating
Nat, the master of our troop, was not an ill-natured fellow, and the
glee-women's feet were well used to his rebeck.  Moreover, the Fire-
eater had an eye to little Perronel, though her mother had never let
him train her--scarce let him set an eye on her; and when Mistress
Fulford died, poor soul, of ague, caught when we showed off before
the merry Prior of Worcester, her last words were that Perronel
should never be a glee-maiden.  Well, to make an end of my tale, we
had one day a mighty show at Windsor, when the King and Court were
at the castle, and it was whispered to me at the end that my Lord
Archbishop's household needed a jester, and that Quipsome Hal had
been thought to make excellent fooling.  I gave thanks at first, but
said I would rather be a free man, not bound to be a greater fool
than Dame Nature made me all the hours of the day.  But when I got
back to the Garter, what should I find but that poor old Martin had
been stricken with the dead palsy while he was playing his rebeck,
and would never twang a note more; and there was pretty Perronel
weeping over him, and Nat Fire-eater pledging his word to give the
old man bed, board, and all that he could need, if so be that
Perronel should be trained to be one of his glee-maidens, to dance
and tumble and sing.  And there was the poor old franklin shaking
his head more than the palsy made it shake already, and trying to
frame his lips to say, 'rather they both should die.'"

"Oh, uncle, I wot now what thou didst!" cried Stephen.

"Yea, lad, there was nought else to be done.  I asked Master Fulford
to give me Perronel, plighting my word that never should she sing or
dance for any one's pleasure save her own and mine, and letting him
know that I came of a worthy family.  We were wedded out of hand by
the priest that had been sent for to housel him, and in our true
names.  The Fire-eater was fiery enough, and swore that, wedded or
not, I was bound to him, that he would have both of us, and would
not drag about a helpless old man unless he might have the wench to
do his bidding.  I verily believe that, but for my being on the
watch and speaking a word to two or three stout yeomen of the king's
guard that chanced to be crushing a pot of sack at the Garter, he
would have played some villainous trick on us.  They gave a hint to
my Lord of York's steward, and he came down and declared that the
Archbishop required Quipsome Hal, and would--of his grace--send a
purse of nobles to the Fire-eater, wherewith he was to be off on the
spot without more ado, or he might find it the worse for him, and
they, together with mine host's good wife, took care that the rogue
did not carry away Perronel with him, as he was like to have done.
To end my story, here am I, getting showers of gold coins one day
and nought but kicks and gibes the next, while my good woman keeps
house nigh here on the banks of the Thames with Gaffer Martin.  Her
Flemish thrift has set her to the washing and clear-starching of the
lawyers' ruffs, whereby she makes enough to supply the defects of my
scanty days, or when I have to follow my lord's grace out of her
reach, sweet soul.  There's my tale, nevoys.  And now, have ye a
hand for Quipsome Hal?"

"O uncle!  Father would have honoured thee!" cried Stephen.

"Why didst thou not bring her down to the Forest?" said Ambrose.

"I conned over the thought," said Randall, "but there was no way of
living.  I wist not whether the Ranger might not stir up old tales,
and moreover old Martin is ill to move.  We brought him down by boat
from Windsor, and he has never quitted the house since, nor his bed
for the last two years.  You'll come and see the housewife?  She
hath a supper laying out for you, and on the way we'll speak of what
ye are to do, my poor lads."

"I'd forgotten that," said Stephen.

"So had not I," returned his uncle; "I fear me I cannot aid you to
preferment as you expected.  None know Quipsome Hal by any name but
that of Harry Merryman, and it were not well that ye should come in
there as akin to the poor fool."

"No," said Stephen, emphatically.

"Your father left you twenty crowns apiece?"

"Ay, but John hath all save four of them."

"For that there's remedy.  What saidst thou of the Cheapside
armourer?  His fellow, the Wry-mouth, seemed to have a care of you.
Ye made in to the rescue with poor old Spring."

"Even so," replied Ambrose, "and if Stevie would brook the thought,
I trow that Master Headley would be quite willing to have him bound
as his apprentice."

"Well said, my good lad!" cried Hal.  "What sayest thou, Stevie?"

"I had liefer be a man-at-arms."

"That thou couldst only be after being sorely knocked about as
horseboy and as groom.  I tried that once, but found it meant kicks,
and oaths, and vile company--such as I would not have for thy
mother's son, Steve.  Headley is a well-reported, God-fearing man,
and will do well by thee.  And thou wilt learn the use of arms as
well as handle them."

"I like Master Headley and Kit Smallbones well enough," said
Stephen, rather gloomily, "and if a gentleman must be a prentice,
weapons are not so bad a craft for him."

"Whittington was a gentleman," said Ambrose.

"I am sick of Whittington," muttered Stephen.

"Nor is he the only one," said Randall; "there's Middleton and Pole-
-ay, and many another who have risen from the flat cap to the open
helm, if not to the coronet.  Nay, these London companies have rules
against taking any prentice not of gentle blood.  Come in to supper
with my good woman, and then I'll go with thee and hold converse
with good Master Headley, and if Master John doth not send the fee
freely, why then I know of them who shall make him disgorge it.  But
mark," he added, as he led the way out of the gardens, "not a breath
of Quipsome Hal.  Down here they know me as a clerk of my lord's
chamber, sad and sober, and high in his trust, and therein they are
not far out."

In truth, though Harry Randall had been a wild and frolicsome youth
in his Hampshire home, the effect of being a professional buffoon
had actually made it a relaxation of effort to him to be grave,
quiet, and slow in movement; and this was perhaps a more effectual
disguise than the dark garments, and the false brown hair, beard,
and moustache, with which he concealed the shorn and shaven
condition required of the domestic jester.  Having been a player, he
was well able to adapt himself to his part, and yet Ambrose had
considerable doubts whether Tibble had not suspected his identity
from the first, more especially as both the lads had inherited the
same dark eyes from their mother, and Ambrose for the first time
perceived a considerable resemblance between him and Stephen, not
only in feature but in unconscious gesture.

Ambrose was considering whether he had better give his uncle a hint,
lest concealment should excite suspicion; when, niched as it were
against an abutment of the wall of the Temple courts, close to some
steps going down to the Thames, they came upon a tiny house, at
whose open door stood a young woman in the snowiest of caps and
aprons over a short black gown, beneath which were a trim pair of
blue hosen and stout shoes; a suspicion of yellow hair was allowed
to appear framing the honest, fresh, Flemish face, which beamed a
good-humoured welcome.

"Here they be! here be the poor lads, Pernel mine."  She held out
her hand, and offered a round comfortable cheek to each, saying,
"Welcome to London, young gentlemen."

Good Mistress Perronel did not look exactly the stuff to make a
glee-maiden of, nor even the beauty for whom to sacrifice
everything, even liberty and respect.  She was substantial in form,
and broad in face and mouth, without much nose, and with large
almost colourless eyes.  But there was a wonderful look of
heartiness and friendliness about her person and her house; the boys
had never in their lives seen anything so amazingly and spotlessly
clean and shining.  In a corner stood an erection like a dark oaken
cupboard or wardrobe, but in the middle was an opening about a yard
square through which could be seen the night-capped face of a white-
headed, white-bearded old man, propped against snowy pillows.  To
him Randall went at once, saying, "So, gaffer, how goes it?  You see
I have brought company, my poor sister's sons--rest her soul!"

Gaffer Martin mumbled something to them incomprehensible, but which
the jester comprehended, for he called them up and named them to
him, and Martin put out a bony hand, and gave them a greeting.
Though his speech and limbs had failed him, his intelligence was
evidently still intact, and there was a tenderly-cared-for look
about him, rendering his condition far less pitiable than that of
Richard Birkenholt, who was so palpably treated as an incumbrance.

The table was already covered with a cloth, and Perronel quickly
placed on it a yellow bowl of excellent beef broth, savoury with
vegetables and pot-herbs, and with meat and dumplings floating in
it.  A lesser bowl was provided for each of the company, with horn
spoons, and a loaf of good wheaten bread, and a tankard of excellent
ale.  Randall declared that his Perronel made far daintier dishes
than my Lord Archbishop's cook, who went every day in silk and
velvet.

He explained to her his views on the armourer, to which she agreed
with all her might, the old gentleman in bed adding something which
the boys began to understand, that there was no worthier nor more
honourable condition than that of an English burgess, specially in
the good town of London, where the kings knew better than to be ever
at enmity with their good towns.

"Will the armourer take both of you?" asked Mistress Randall.

"Nay, it was only for Stephen we devised it," said Ambrose.

"And what wilt thou do?"

"I wish to be a scholar," said Ambrose.

"A lean trade," quoth the jester; "a monk now or a friar may be a
right jolly fellow, but I never yet saw a man who throve upon
books!"

"I had rather study than thrive," said Ambrose rather dreamily.

"He wotteth not what he saith," cried Stephen.

"Oh ho! so thou art of that sort!" rejoined his uncle.  "I know
them!  A crabbed black and white page is meat and drink to them!
There's that Dutch fellow, with a long Latin name, thin and weazen
as never was Dutchman before; they say he has read all the books in
the world, and can talk in all the tongues, and yet when he and Sir
Thomas More and the Dean of St. Paul's get together at my lord's
table one would think they were bidding for my bauble.  Such
excellent fooling do they make, that my lord sits holding his
sides."

"The Dean of St. Paul's!" said Ambrose, experiencing a shock.

"Ay!  He's another of your lean scholars, and yet he was born a
wealthy man, son to a Lord Mayor, who, they say, reared him alone
out of a round score of children."

"Alack! poor souls," sighed Mistress Randall under her breath, for,
as Ambrose afterwards learnt, her two babes had scarce seen the
light.  Her husband, while giving her a look of affection, went on--
"Not that he can keep his wealth.  He has bestowed the most of it on
Stepney church, and on the school he hath founded for poor children,
nigh to St. Paul's."

"Could I get admittance to that school?" exclaimed Ambrose.

"Thou art a big fellow for a school," said his uncle, looking him
over.  "However, faint heart never won fair lady."

"I have a letter from the Warden of St. Elizabeth's to one of the
clerks of St. Paul's," added Ambrose.  "Alworthy is his name."

"That's well.  We'll prove that same," said his uncle.  "Meantime,
if ye have eaten your fill, we must be on our way to thine armourer,
nevoy Stephen, or I shall be called for."

And after a private colloquy between the husband and wife, Ambrose
was by both of them desired to make the little house his home until
he could find admittance into St. Paul's School, or some other.  He
demurred somewhat from a mixture of feelings, in which there was a
certain amount of Stephen's longing for freedom of action, and
likewise a doubt whether he should not thus be a great inconvenience
in the tiny household--a burden he was resolved not to be.  But his
uncle now took a more serious tone.

"Look thou, Ambrose, thou art my sister's son, and fool though I be,
thou art bound in duty to me, and I to have charge of thee, nor will
I--for the sake of thy father and mother--have thee lying I know not
where, among gulls, and cutpurses, and beguilers of youth here in
this city of London.  So, till better befals thee, and I wot of it,
thou must be here no later than curfew, or I will know the reason
why."

"And I hope the young gentleman will find it no sore grievance,"
said Perronel, so good-humouredly that Ambrose could only protest
that he had feared to be troublesome to her, and promise to bring
his bundle the next day.



CHAPTER IX.  ARMS SPIRITUAL AND TEMPORAL



"For him was leifer to have at his bedde's hedde
Twenty books clothed in blacke or redde
Of Aristotle and his philosophie
Than robes riche or fiddle or psalterie."

CHAUCER.


Master Headley was found spending the summer evening in the bay
window of the hall.  Tibble sat on a three-legged stool by him,
writing in a crabbed hand, in a big ledger, and Kit Smallbones
towered above both, holding in his hand a bundle of tally-sticks.
By the help of these, and of that accuracy of memory which writing
has destroyed, he was unfolding, down to the very last farthing, the
entire account of payments and receipts during his master's absence,
the debtor and creditor account being preserved as perfectly as if
he had always had a pen in his huge fingers, and studied book-
keeping by double or single entry.

On the return of the two boys with such an apparently respectable
member of society as the handsome well-dressed personage who
accompanied them, little Dennet, who had been set to sew her sampler
on a stool by her grandmother, under penalty of being sent off to
bed if she disturbed her father, sprang up with a little cry of
gladness, and running up to Ambrose, entreated for the tales of his
good greenwood Forest, and the pucks and pixies, and the girl who
daily shared her breakfast with a snake and said, "Eat your own
side, Speckleback."  Somehow, on Sunday night she had gathered that
Ambrose had a store of such tales, and she dragged him off to the
gallery, there to revel in them, while his brother remained with her
father.

Though Master Stephen had begun by being high and mighty about
mechanical crafts, and thought it a great condescension to consent
to be bound apprentice, yet when once again in the Dragon court, it
looked so friendly and felt so much like a home that he found
himself very anxious that Master Headley should not say that he
could take no more apprentices at present, and that he should be
satisfied with the terms uncle Hal would propose.  And oh! suppose
Tibble should recognise Quipsome Hal!

However, Tibble was at this moment entirely engrossed by the
accounts, and his master left him and his big companion to unravel
them, while he himself held speech with his guest at some distance--
sending for a cup of sack, wherewith to enliven the conversation.

He showed himself quite satisfied with what Randall chose to tell of
himself as a well known "housekeeper" close to the Temple, his wife
a "lavender" there, while he himself was attached to the suite of
the Archbishop of York.  Here alone was there any approach to
shuffling, for Master Headley was left to suppose that Randall
attended Wolsey in his capacity of king's counsellor, and therefore,
having a house of his own, had not been found in the roll of the
domestic retainers and servants.  He did not think of inquiring
further, the more so as Randall was perfectly candid as to his own
inferiority of birth to the Birkenholt family, and the circumstances
under which he had left the Forest.

Master Headley professed to be quite willing to accept Stephen as an
apprentice, with or without a fee; but he agreed with Randall that
it would be much better not to expose him to having it cast in his
teeth that he was accepted out of charity; and Randall undertook to
get a letter so written and conveyed to John Birkenholt that he
should not dare to withhold the needful sum, in earnest of which
Master Headley would accept the two crowns that Stephen had in hand,
as soon as the indentures could be drawn out by one of the many
scriveners who lived about St. Paul's.

This settled, Randall could stay no longer, but he called both
nephews into the court with him.  "Ye can write a letter?" he said.

"Ay, sure, both of us; but Ambrose is the best scribe," said
Stephen.

"One of you had best write then.  Let that cur John know that I have
my Lord of York's ear, and there will be no fear but he will give
it.  I'll find a safe hand among the clerks, when the judges ride to
hold the assize.  Mayhap Ambrose might also write to the Father at
Beaulieu.  The thing had best be bruited."

"I wished to do so," said Ambrose.  "It irked me to have taken no
leave of the good Fathers."

Randall then took his leave, having little more than time to return
to York House, where the Archbishop might perchance come home
wearied and chafed from the King, and the jester might be missed if
not there to put him in good humour.

The curfew sounded, and though attention to its notes was not
compulsory by law, it was regarded as the break-up of the evening
and the note of recall in all well-ordered establishments.  The
apprentices and journeymen came into the court, among them Giles
Headley, who had been taken out by one of the men to be provided
with a working dress, much to his disgust; the grandmother summoned
little Dennet and carried her off to bed.  Stephen and Ambrose bade
good-night, but Master Headley and his two confidential men remained
somewhat longer to wind up their accounts.  Doors were not, as a
rule, locked within the court, for though it contained from forty to
fifty persons, they were all regarded as a single family, and it was
enough to fasten the heavily bolted, iron-studded folding doors of
the great gateway leading into Cheapside, the key being brought to
the master like that of a castle, seven minutes, measured by the
glass, after the last note of the curfew in the belfry outside St.
Paul's.

The summer twilight, however, lasted long after this time of grace,
and when Tibble had completed his accountant's work, and Smallbones'
deep voiced "Goodnight, comrade," had resounded over the court, he
beheld a figure rise up from the steps of the gallery, and Ambrose's
voice said:  "May I speak to thee, Tibble?  I need thy counsel."

"Come hither, sir," said the foreman, muttering to himself,
"Methought 'twas working in him!  The leaven! the leaven!"

Tibble led the way up one of the side stairs into the open gallery,
where he presently opened a door, admitting to a small, though high
chamber, the walls of bare brick, and containing a low bed, a small
table, a three-legged stool, a big chest, and two cupboards, also a
cross over the head of the bed.  A private room was a luxury neither
possessed nor desired by most persons of any degree, and only
enjoyed by Tibble in consideration of his great value to his master,
his peculiar tastes, and the injuries he had received.  In point of
fact, his fall had been owing to a hasty blow, given in a passion by
the master himself when a young man.  Dismay and repentance had made
Giles Headley a cooler and more self-controlled man ever since, and
even if Tibble had not been a superior workman, he might still have
been free to do almost anything he chose.  Tibble gave his visitor
the stool, and himself sat down on the chest, saying:  "So you have
found your uncle, sir."

"Ay," said Ambrose, pausing in some expectation that Tibble would
mention some suspicion of his identity; but if the foreman had his
ideas on the subject he did not disclose them, and waited for more
communications.

"Tibble!" said Ambrose, with a long gasp, "I must find means to hear
more of him thou tookedst me to on Sunday."

"None ever truly tasted of that well without longing to come back to
it," quoth Tibble.  "But hath not thy kinsman done aught for thee?"

"Nay," said Ambrose, "save to offer me a lodging with his wife, a
good and kindly lavender at the Temple."

Tibble nodded.

"So far am I free," said Ambrose, "and I am glad of it.  I have a
letter here to one of the canons, one Master Alworthy, but ere I
seek him I would know somewhat from thee, Tibble.  What like is he?"

"I cannot tell, sir," said Tibble.  "The canons are rich and many,
and a poor smith like me wots little of their fashions."

"Is it true," again asked Ambrose, "that the Dean--he who spake
those words yesterday--hath a school here for young boys?"

"Ay.  And a good and mild school it be, bringing them up in the name
and nurture of the Holy Child Jesus, to whom it is dedicated."

"Then they are taught this same doctrine?"

"I trow they be.  They say the Dean loves them like the children of
his old age, and declares that they shall be made in love with holy
lore by gentleness rather than severity."

"Is it likely that this same Alworthy could obtain me entrance
there?"

"Alack, sir, I fear me thou art too old.  I see none but little lads
among them.  Didst thou come to London with that intent?"

"Nay, for I only wist to-day that there was such a school.  I came
with I scarce know what purpose, save to see Stephen safely
bestowed, and then to find some way of learning myself.  Moreover, a
change seems to have come on me, as though I had hitherto been
walking in a dream."

Tibble nodded, and Ambrose, sitting there in the dark, was moved to
pour forth all his heart, the experience of many an ardent soul in
those spirit searching days.  Growing up happily under the care of
the simple monks of Beaulieu he had never looked beyond their
somewhat mechanical routine, accepted everything implicitly, and
gone on acquiring knowledge with the receptive spirit but dormant
thought of studious boyhood as yet unawakened, thinking that the
studious clerical life to which every one destined him would only be
a continuation of the same, as indeed it had been to his master,
Father Simon.  Not that Ambrose expressed this, beyond saying, "They
are good and holy men, and I thought all were like them, and fear
that was all!"

Then came death, for the first time nearly touching and affecting
the youth, and making his soul yearn after further depths, which he
might yet have found in the peace of the good old men, and the holy
rites and doctrine that they preserved; but before there was time
for these things to find their way into the wounds of his spirit,
his expulsion from home had sent him forth to see another side of
monkish and clerkly life.

Father Shoveller, kindly as he was, was a mere yeoman with nothing
spiritual about him; the monks of Hyde were, the younger, gay
comrades, only trying how loosely they could sit to their vows; the
elder, churlish and avaricious; even the Warden of Elizabeth College
was little more than a student.  And in London, fresh phases had
revealed themselves; the pomp, state, splendour and luxury of
Archbishop Wolsey's house had been a shock to the lad's ideal of a
bishop drawn from the saintly biographies he had studied at
Beaulieu; and he had but to keep his ears open to hear endless
scandals about the mass priests, as they were called, since they
were at this time very unpopular in London, and in many cases
deservedly so.  Everything that the boy had hitherto thought the way
of holiness and salvation seemed invaded by evil and danger, and
under the bondage of death, whose terrible dance continued to haunt
him.

"I saw it, I saw it;" he said, "all over those halls at York House.
I seemed to behold the grisly shape standing behind one and another,
as they ate and laughed; and when the Archbishop and his priests and
the King came in it seemed only to make the pageant complete!  Only
now and then could I recall those blessed words, 'Ye are free
indeed.'  Did he say from the bondage of death?"

"Yea," said Tibble, "into the glorious freedom of God's children."

"Thou knowst it.  Thou knowst it, Tibble.  It seems to me that life
is no life, but living death, without that freedom!  And I MUST hear
of it, and know whether it is mine, yea, and Stephen's, and all whom
I love.  O Tibble, I would beg my bread rather than not have that
freedom ever before mine eyes."

"Hold it fast! hold it fast, dear sir," said Tibble, holding out his
hands with tears in his eyes, and his face working in a manner that
happily Ambrose could not see.

"But how--how?  The barefoot friar said that for an Ave a day, our
Blessed Lady will drag us back from purgatory.  I saw her on the
wall of her chapel at Winchester saving a robber knight from the
sea, yea and a thief from the gallows; but that is not being free."

"Fond inventions of pardon-mongers," muttered Tibble.

"And is one not free when the priest hath assoilsied him?" added
Ambrose.

"If, and if--" said Tibble.  "But bone shall make me trow that
shrift in words, without heart-sorrow for sin, and the Latin heard
with no thought of Him that bore the guilt, can set the sinner free.
'Tis none other that the Dean sets forth, ay, and the book that I
have here.  I thank my God," he stood up and took off his cap
reverently, "that He hath opened the eyes of another!"

His tone was such that Ambrose could have believed him some devout
almost inspired hermit rather than the acute skilful artisan he
appeared at other times; and in fact, Tibble Steelman, like many
another craftsman of those days, led a double life, the outer one
that of the ordinary workman, the inner one devoted to those lights
that were shining unveiled and new to many; and especially here in
the heart of the City, partly from the influence of Dean Colet's
sermons and catechisings at St. Paul's, but also from remnants of
Lollardism, which had never been entirely quenched.  The ordinary
clergy looked at it with horror, but the intelligent and thoughtful
of the burgher and craftsman classes studied it with a passionate
fervour which might have sooner broken out and in more perilous
forms save for the guidance it received in the truly Catholic and
open-spirited public teachings of Colet, in which he persisted in
spite of the opposition of his brother clergy.

Not that as yet the inquirers had in the slightest degree broken
with the system of the Church, or with her old traditions.  They
were only beginning to see the light that had been veiled from them,
and to endeavour to clear the fountain from the mire that had fouled
it; and there was as yet no reason to believe that the aspersions
continually made against the mass priests and the friars were more
than the chronic grumblings of Englishmen, who had found the same
faults in them for the last two hundred years.

"And what wouldst thou do, young sir?" presently inquired Tibble.

"That I came to ask thee, good Tibble.  I would work to the best of
my power in any craft so I may hear those words and gain the key to
all I have hitherto learnt, unheeding as one in a dream.  My purpose
had been to be a scholar and a clerk, but I must see mine own way,
and know whither I am being carried, ere I can go farther."

Tibble writhed and wriggled himself about in consideration.  "I
would I wist how to take thee to the Dean himself," he said, "but I
am but a poor man, and his doctrine is 'new wine in old bottles' to
the master, though he be a right good man after his lights.  See
now, Master Ambrose, meseemeth that thou hadst best take thy letter
first to this same priest.  It may be that he can prefer thee to
some post about the minster.  Canst sing?"

"I could once, but my voice is nought at this present.  If I could
but be a servitor at St. Paul's School!"

"It might be that the will which hath led thee so far hath that post
in store for thee, so bear the letter to Master Alworthy.  And if he
fail thee, wouldst thou think scorn of aiding a friend of mine who
worketh a printing-press in Warwick Inner Yard?  Thou wilt find him
at his place in Paternoster Row, hard by St. Paul's.  He needeth one
who is clerk enough to read the Latin, and the craft being a new one
'tis fenced by none of those prentice laws that would bar the way to
thee elsewhere, at thy years."

"I should dwell among books!"

"Yea, and holy books, that bear on the one matter dear to the true
heart.  Thou might serve Lucas Hansen at the sign of the Winged
Staff till thou hast settled thine heart, and then it may be the way
would be opened to study at Oxford or at Cambridge, so that thou
couldst expound the faith to others."

"Good Tibble, kind Tibble, I knew thou couldst aid me!  Wilt thou
speak to this Master Hansen for me?"

Tibble, however, held that it was more seemly that Ambrose should
first try his fate with Master Alworthy, but in case of this not
succeeding, he promised to write a billet that would secure
attention from Lucas Hansen.

"I warn thee, however, that he is Low Dutch," he added, "though he
speaketh English well."  He would gladly have gone with the youth,
and at any other time might have been sent by his master, but the
whole energies of the Dragon would be taken up for the next week by
preparations for the tilting-match at court, and Tibble could not be
spared for another working hour.

Ambrose, as he rose to bid his friend good-night, could not help
saying that he marvelled that one such as he could turn his mind to
such vanities as the tilt-yard required.

"Nay," said Tibble, "'twas the craft I was bred to--yea, and I have
a good master; and the Apostle Paul himself--as I've heard a
preacher say--bade men continue in the state wherein they were, and
not be curious to chop and change.  Who knoweth whether in God's
sight, all our wars and policies be no more than the games of the
tilt-yard.  Moreover, Paul himself made these very weapons read as
good a sermon as the Dean himself.  Didst never hear of the shield
of faith, and helmet of salvation, and breastplate of righteousness?
So, if thou comest to Master Hansen, and provest worthy of his
trust, thou wilt hear more, ay, and maybe read too thyself, and send
forth the good seed to others," he murmured to himself, as he guided
his visitor across the moonlit court up the stairs to the chamber
where Stephen lay fast asleep.



CHAPTER X.  TWO VOCATIONS



"The smith, a mighty man is he
   With large and sinewy hands;
And the muscles of his brawny arms
   Are strong as iron bands."

LONGFELLOW.


Stephen's first thought in the morning was whether the ex voto
effigy of poor Spring was put in hand, while Ambrose thought of
Tibble's promised commendation to the printer.  They both, however,
found their affairs must needs wait.  Orders for weapons for the
tilting-match had come in so thickly the day before that every hand
must be employed on executing them, and the Dragon court was ringing
again with the clang of hammers and screech of grind-stones.

Stephen, though not yet formally bound, was to enter on his
apprentice life at once; and Ambrose was assured by Master Headley
that it was of no use to repair to any of the dignified clergy of
St. Paul's before mid-day, and that he had better employ the time in
writing to his elder brother respecting the fee.  Materials were
supplied to him, and he used them so as to do credit to the monks of
Beaulieu, in spite of little Dennet spending every spare moment in
watching his pen as if he were performing some cabalistic operation.

He was a long time about it.  There were two letters to write, and
the wording of thorn needed to be very careful, besides that the old
court hand took more time to frame than the Italian current hand,
and even thus, when dinner-time came, at ten o'clock, the household
was astonished to find that he had finished all that regarded
Stephen, though he had left the letters open, until his own venture
should have been made.

Stephen flung himself down beside his brother hot and panting,
shaking his shoulder-blades and declaring that his arms felt ready
to drop out.  He had been turning a grindstone ever since six
o'clock.  The two new apprentices had been set on to sharpening the
weapon points as all that they were capable of, and had been bidden
by Smallbones to turn and hold alternately, but "that oaf Giles
Headley," said Stephen, "never ground but one lance, and made me go
on turning, threatening to lay the butt about mine ears if I
slacked."

"The lazy lubber!" cried Ambrose.  "But did none see thee, or
couldst not call out for redress?"

"Thou art half a wench thyself, Ambrose, to think I'd complain.
Besides, he stood on his rights as a master, and he is a big
fellow."

"That's true," said Ambrose, "and he might make it the worse for
thee."

"I would I were as big as he," sighed Stephen, "I would soon show
him which was the better man."

Perhaps the grinding match had not been as unobserved as Stephen
fancied, for on returning to work, Smallbones, who presided over all
the rougher parts of the business, claimed them both.  He set
Stephen to stand by him, sort out and hand him all the rivets needed
for a suit of proof armour that hung on a frame, while he required
Giles to straighten bars of iron heated to a white heat.  Ere long
Giles called out for Stephen to change places, to which Smallbones
coolly replied, "Turnabout is the rule here, master."

"Even so," replied Giles, "and I have been at work like this long
enough, ay, and too long!"

"Thy turn was a matter of three hours this morning," replied Kit--
not coolly, for nobody was cool in his den, but with a brevity which
provoked a laugh.

"I shall see what my cousin the master saith!" cried Giles in great
wrath.

"Ay, that thou wilt," returned Kit, "if thou dost loiter over thy
business, and hast not those bars ready when called for."

"He never meant me to be put on work like this, with a hammer that
breaks mine arm."

"What! crying out for THAT!" said Edmund Burgess, who had just come
in to ask for a pair of tongs.  "What wouldst say to the big hammer
that none can wield save Kit himself?"

Giles felt there was no redress, and panted on, feeling as if he
were melting away, and with a dumb, wild rage in his heart, that
could get no outlet, for Smallbones was at least as much bigger than
he as he was than Stephen.  Tibble was meanwhile busy over the
gilding and enamelling of Buckingham's magnificent plate armour in
Italian fashion, but he had found time to thrust into Ambrose's hand
an exceedingly small and curiously folded billet for Lucas Hansen,
the printer, in case of need.  "He would be found at the sign of the
Winged Staff, in Paternoster Row," said Tibble, "or if not there
himself, there would be his servant who would direct Ambrose to the
place where the Dutch printer lived and worked."  No one was at
leisure to show the lad the way, and he set out with a strange
feeling of solitude, as his path began decisively to be away from
that of his brother.

He did not find much difficulty in discovering the quadrangle on the
south side of the minster where the minor canons lived near the
deanery; and the porter, a stout lay brother, pointed out to him the
doorway belonging to Master Alworthy.  He knocked, and a young man
with a tonsured head but a bloated face opened it.  Ambrose
explained that he had brought a letter from the Warden of St.
Elizabeth's College at Winchester.

"Give it here," said the young man.

"I would give it to his reverence himself," said Ambrose.

"His reverence is taking his after-dinner nap and may not be
disturbed," said the man.

"Then I will wait," said Ambrose.

The door was shut in his face, but it was the shady side of the
court, and he sat down on a bench and waited.  After full an hour
the door was opened, and the canon, a good-natured looking man, in a
square cap, and gown and cassock of the finest cloth, came slowly
out.  He had evidently heard nothing of the message, and was taken
by surprise when Ambrose, doffing his cap and bowing low, gave him
the greeting of the Warden of St. Elizabeth's and the letter.

"Hum!  Ha!  My good friend--Fielder--I remember him.  He was always
a scholar.  So he hath sent thee here with his commendations.  What
should I do with all the idle country lads that come up to choke
London and feed the plague?  Yet stay--that lurdane Bolt is getting
intolerably lazy and insolent, and methinks he robs me!  What canst
do, thou stripling?"

"I can read Latin, sir, and know the Greek alphabeta."

"Tush!  I want no scholar more than enough to serve my mass.  Canst
sing?"

"Not now; but I hope to do so again."

"When I rid me of Bolt there--and there's an office under the
sacristan that he might fill as well as another knave--the fellow
might do for me well enow as a body servant," said Mr. Alworthy,
speaking to himself.  "He would brush my gowns and make my bed, and
I might perchance trust him with my marketings, and by and by there
might be some office for him when he grew saucy and idle.  I'll
prove him on mine old comrade's word."

"Sir," said Ambrose, respectfully, "what I seek for is occasion for
study.  I had hoped you could speak to the Dean, Dr. John Colet, for
some post at his school."

"Boy," said Alworthy, "I thought thee no such fool!  Why crack thy
brains with study when I can show thee a surer path to ease and
preferment?  But I see thou art too proud to do an old man a
service.  Thou writst thyself gentleman, forsooth, and high blood
will not stoop."

"Not so, sir," returned Ambrose, "I would work in any way so I could
study the humanities, and hear the Dean preach.  Cannot you commend
me to his school?"

"Ha!" exclaimed the canon, "this is your sort, is it?  I'll have
nought to do with it!  Preaching, preaching!  Every idle child's
head is agog on preaching nowadays!  A plague on it!  Why can't
Master Dean leave it to the black friars, whose vocation 'tis, and
not cumber us with his sermons for ever, and set every lazy lad
thinking he must needs run after them?  No, no, my good boy, take my
advice.  Thou shalt have two good bellyfuls a day, all my cast
gowns, and a pair of shoes by the year, with a groat a month if thou
wilt keep mine house, bring in my meals, and the like, and by and
by, so thou art a good lad, and runst not after these new-fangled
preachments which lead but to heresy, and set folk racking their
brains about sin and such trash, we'll get thee shorn and into minor
orders, and who knows what good preferment thou mayst not win in due
time!"

"Sir, I am beholden to you, but my mind is set on study."

"What kin art thou to a fool?" cried the minor canon, so startling
Ambrose that he had almost answered, and turning to another
ecclesiastic whose siesta seemed to have ended about the same time,
"Look at this varlet, Brother Cloudesley!  Would you believe it?  He
comes to me with a letter from mine old friend, in consideration of
which I offer him that saucy lubber Bolt's place, a gown of mine own
a year, meat and preferment, and, lo you, he tells me all he wants
is to study Greek, forsooth, and hear the Dean's sermons!"

The other canon shook his head in dismay at such arrant folly.
"Young stripling, be warned," he said.  "Know what is good for thee.
Greek is the tongue of heresy."

"How may that be, reverend sir," said Ambrose, "when the holy
Apostles and the Fathers spake and wrote in the Greek?"

"Waste not thy time on him, brother," said Mr. Alworthy.  "He will
find out his error when his pride and his Greek forsooth have
brought him to fire and faggot."

"Ay! ay!" added Cloudesley.  "The Dean with his Dutch friend and his
sermons, and his new grammar and accidence, is sowing heretics as
thick as groundsel."

Wherewith the two canons of the old school waddled away, arm in arm,
and Bolt put out his head, leered at Ambrose, and bade him shog off,
and not come sneaking after other folk's shoes.

Sooth to say, Ambrose was relieved by his rejection.  If he were not
to obtain admission in any capacity to St. Paul's School, he felt
more drawn to Tibble's friend the printer; for the self-seeking
luxurious habits into which so many of the beneficed clergy had
fallen were repulsive to him, and his whole soul thirsted after that
new revelation, as it were, which Colet's sermon had made to him.
Yet the word heresy was terrible and confusing, and a doubt came
over him whether he might not be forsaking the right path, and be
lured aside by false lights.

He would think it out before he committed himself.  Where should he
do so in peace?  He thought of the great Minster, but the nave was
full of a surging multitude, and there was a loud hum of voices
proceeding from it, which took from him all inclination to find his
way to the quieter and inner portions of the sanctuary.

Then he recollected the little Pardon Church, where he had seen the
Dance of Death on the walls; and crossing the burial-ground he
entered, and, as he expected, found it empty, since the hours for
masses for the dead were now past.  He knelt down on a step,
repeated the sext office, in warning for which the bells were
chiming all round, covering his face with his hands, and thinking
himself back to Beaulieu; then, seating himself on a step, leaning
against the wall, he tried to think out whether to give himself up
to the leadings of the new light that had broken on him, or whether
to wrench himself from it.  Was this, which seemed to him truth and
deliverance, verily the heresy respecting which rumours had come to
horrify the country convents?  If he had only heard of it from
Tibble Wry-mouth, he would have doubted, in spite of its power over
him, but he had heard it from a man, wise, good, and high in place,
like Dean Colet.  Yet to his further perplexity, his uncle had
spoken of Colet as jesting at Wolsey's table.  What course should he
take?  Could he bear to turn away from that which drew his soul so
powerfully, and return to the bounds which seem to him to be grown
so narrow, but which he was told were safe?  Now that Stephen was
settled, it was open to him to return to St. Elizabeth's College,
but the young soul within him revolted against the repetition of
what had become to him unsatisfying, unless illumined by the
brightness he seemed to have glimpsed at.

But Ambrose had gone through much unwonted fatigue of late, and
while thus musing he fell asleep, with his head against the wall.
He was half wakened by the sound of voices, and presently became
aware that two persons were examining the walls, and comparing the
paintings with some others, which one of them had evidently seen.
If he had known it, it was with the Dance of Death on the bridge of
Lucerne.

"I question," said a voice that Ambrose had heard before, "whether
these terrors be wholesome for men's souls."

"For priests' pouches, they be," said the other, with something of a
foreign accent.

"Alack, when shall we see the day when the hope of paradise and
dread of purgatory shall be no longer made the tools of priestly
gain; and hatred of sin taught to these poor folk, instead of
servile dread of punishment."

"Have a care, my Colet," answered the yellow bearded foreigner;
"thou art already in ill odour with those same men in authority; and
though a Dean's stall be fenced from the episcopal crook, yet there
is a rod at Rome which can reach even thither."

"I tell thee, dear Erasmus, thou art too timid; I were well content
to leave house and goods, yea, to go to prison or to death, could I
but bring home to one soul, for which Christ died, the truth and
hope in every one of those prayers and creeds that our poor folk are
taught to patter as a senseless charm."

"These are strange times," returned Erasmus.  "Methinks yonder
phantom, be he skeleton or angel, will have snatched both of us away
ere we behold the full issue either of thy preachings, or my Greek
Testament, or of our More's Utopian images.  Dost thou not feel as
though we were like children who have set some mighty engine in
motion, like the great water-wheels in my native home, which,
whirled by the flowing streams of time and opinion, may break up the
whole foundations, and destroy the oneness of the edifice?"

"It may be so," returned Colet.  "What read we?  'The net brake'
even in the Master's sight, while still afloat on the sea.  It was
only on the shore that the hundred and fifty-three, all good and
sound, were drawn to His feet."

"And," returned Erasmus, "I see wherefore thou hast made thy
children at St. Paul's one hundred and fifty and three."

The two friends were passing out.  Their latter speeches had scarce
been understood by Ambrose, even if he heard them, so full was he of
conflicting feelings, now ready to cast himself before their feet,
and entreat the Dean to help him to guidance, now withheld by
bashfulness, unwillingness to interrupt, and ingenuous shame at
appearing like an eavesdropper towards such dignified and venerable
personages.  Had he obeyed his first impulse, mayhap his career had
been made safer and easier for him, but it was while shyness chained
his limbs and tongue that the Dean and Erasmus quitted the chapel,
and the opportunity of accosting them had slipped away.

Their half comprehended words had however decided him in the part he
should take, making him sure that Colet was not controverting the
formularies of the Church, but drawing out those meanings which in
repetition by rote were well-nigh forgotten.  It was as if his
course were made clear to him.

He was determined to take the means which most readily presented
themselves of hearing Colet; and leaving the chapel, he bent his
steps to the Row which his book-loving eye had already marked.
Flanking the great Cathedral on the north, was the row of small open
stalls devoted to the sale of books, or "objects of devotion," all
so arranged that the open portion might be cleared, and the stock-
in-trade locked up if not carried away.  Each stall had its own
sign, most of them sacred, such as the Lamb and Flag, the Scallop
Shell, or some patron saint, but classical emblems were oddly
intermixed, such as Minerva's AEgis, Pegasus, and the Lyre of
Apollo.  The sellers, some middle-aged men, some lads, stretched out
their arms with their wares to attract the passengers in the street,
and did not fail to beset Ambrose.  The more lively looked at his
Lincoln green and shouted verses of ballads at him, fluttering broad
sheets with verses on the lamentable fate of Jane Shore, or Fair
Rosamond, the same woodcut doing duty for both ladies, without mercy
to their beauty.  The scholastic judged by his face and step that he
was a student, and they flourished at him black-bound copies of
Virgilius Maro, and of Tully's Offices, while others, hoping that he
was an incipient clerk, offered breviaries, missals or portuaries,
with the Use of St. Paul's, or of Sarum, or mayhap St. Austin's
Confessions.  He made his way along, with his eye diligently heedful
of the signs, and at last recognised the Winged Staff, or caduceus
of Hermes, over a stall where a couple of boys in blue caps and
gowns and yellow stockings were making a purchase of a small, grave-
looking, elderly but bright cheeked man, whose yellow hair and beard
were getting intermingled with grey.  They were evidently those St.
Paul's School boys whom Ambrose envied so much, and as they finished
their bargaining and ran away together, Ambrose advanced with a
salutation, asked if he did not see Master Lucas Hansen, and gave
him the note with the commendations of Tibble Steelman the armourer.

He was answered with a ready nod and "yea, yea," as the old man
opened the billet and cast his eyes over it; then scanning Ambrose
from head to foot, said with some amazement, "But you are of gentle
blood, young sir."

"I am," said Ambrose; "but gentle blood needs at times to work for
bread, and Tibble let me hope that I might find both livelihood for
the body and for the soul with you, sir."

"Is it so?" asked the printer, his face lighting up.  "Art thou
willing to labour and toil, and give up hope of fee and honour, if
so thou mayst win the truth?"

Ambrose folded his hands with a gesture of earnestness, and Lucas
Hansen said, "Bless thee, my son!  Methinks I can aid thee in thy
quest, so thou canst lay aside," and here his voice grew sharper and
more peremptory, "all thy gentleman's airs and follies, and serve--
ay, serve and obey."

"I trust so," returned Ambrose; "my brother is even now becoming
prentice to Master Giles Headley, and we hope to live as honest men
by the work of our hands and brains."

"I forgot that you English herren are not so puffed up with pride
and scorn like our Dutch nobles," returned the printer.  "Canst live
sparingly, and lie hard, and see that thou keepst the house clean,
not like these English swine?"

"I hope so," said Ambrose, smiling; "but I have an uncle and aunt,
and they would have me lie every night at their house beside the
Temple gardens."

"What is thine uncle?"

"He hath a post in the meine of my Lord Archbishop of York," said
Ambrose, blushing and hesitating a little.  "He cometh to and fro to
his wife, who dwells with her old father, doing fine lavender's work
for the lawyer folk therein."

It was somewhat galling that this should be the most respectable
occupation that could be put forward, but Lucas Hansen was evidently
reassured by it.  He next asked whether Ambrose could read Latin,
putting a book into his hand as he did so; Ambrose read and
construed readily, explaining that he had been trained at Beaulieu.

"That is well!" said the printer; "and hast thou any Greek?"

"Only the alphabeta," said Ambrose, "I made that out from a book at
Beaulieu, but Father Simon knew no more, and there was nought to
study from."

"Even so," replied Hansen, "but little as thou knowst 'tis as much
as I can hope for from any who will aid me in my craft.  'Tis I
that, as thou hast seen, furnish for the use of the children at the
Dean's school of St. Paul's.  The best and foremost scholars of them
are grounded in their Greek, that being the tongue wherein the Holy
Gospels were first writ.  Hitherto I have had to get me books for
their use from Holland, whither they are brought from Basle, but I
have had sent me from Hamburg a fount of type of the Greek
character, whereby I hope to print at home, the accidence, and
mayhap the Dialogues of Plato, and it might even be the sacred
Gospel itself, which the great Doctor, Master Erasmus, is even now
collating from the best authorities in the universities."

Ambrose's eyes kindled with unmistakable delight.  "You have the
accidence!" he exclaimed.  "Then could I study the tongue even while
working for you!  Sir, I would do my best!  It is the very
opportunity I seek."

"Fair and softly," said the printer with something of a smile.
"Thou art new to cheapening and bargaining, my fair lad.  Thou hast
spoken not one word of the wage."

"I recked not of that," said Ambrose.  "'Tis true, I may not burthen
mine uncle and aunt, but verily, sir, I would live on the humblest
fare that will keep body and soul together so that I may have such
an opportunity."

"How knowst thou what the opportunity may be?" returned Lucas,
drily.  "Thou art but a babe!  Some one should have a care of thee.
If I set thee to stand here all day and cry what d'ye lack? or to
carry bales of books twixt this and Warwick Inner Yard, thou wouldst
have no ground to complain."

"Nay, sir," returned Ambrose, "I wot that Tibble Steelman would
never send me to one who would not truly give me what I need."

"Tibble Steelman is verily one of the few who are both called and
chosen," replied Lucas, "and I think thou art the same so far as
green youth may be judged, since thou art one who will follow the
word into the desert, and never ask for the loaves and fishes.
Nevertheless, I will take none advantage of thy youth and zeal, but
thou shalt first behold what thou shalt have to do for me, and then
if it still likes thee, I will see thy kindred.  Hast no father?"

Ambrose explained, and at that moment Master Hansen's boy made his
appearance, returning from an errand; the stall was left in his
charge, while the master took Ambrose with him into the precincts of
what had once been the splendid and hospitable mansion of the great
king-maker, Warwick, but was now broken up into endless little
tenements with their courts and streets, though the baronial
ornaments and the arrangement still showed what the place had been.

Entering beneath a wide archway, still bearing the sign of the Bear
and Ragged Staff, Lucas led the way into what must have been one of
the courts of offices, for it was surrounded with buildings and
sheds of different heights and sizes, and had on one side a deep
trough of stone, fed by a series of water-taps, intended for the use
of the stables.  The doors of one of these buildings was unlocked by
Master Hansen, and Ambrose found himself in what had once perhaps
been part of a stable, but had been partitioned off from the rest.
There were two stalls, one serving the Dutchman for his living room,
the other for his workshop.  In one corner stood a white earthenware
stove--so new a spectacle to the young forester that he supposed it
to be the printing press.  A table, shiny with rubbing, a wooden
chair, a couple of stools, a few vessels, mirrors for brightness,
some chests and corner cupboards, a bed shutting up like a box and
likewise highly polished, completed the furniture, all arranged with
the marvellous orderliness and neatness of the nation.  A curtain
shut off the opening to the other stall, where stood a machine with
a huge screw, turned by leverage.  Boxes of type and piles of paper
surrounded it, and Ambrose stood and looked at it with a sort of
awe-struck wonder and respect as the great fount of wisdom.  Hansen
showed him what his work would be, in setting up type, and by and by
correcting after the first proof.  The machine could only print four
pages at a time, and for this operation the whole strength of the
establishment was required.  Moreover, Master Hansen bound, as well
as printed his books.  Ambrose was by no means daunted.  As long as
he might read as well as print, and while he had Sundays at St.
Paul's to look to, he asked no more--except indeed that his gentle
blood stirred at the notion of acting salesman in the book-stall,
and Master Hansen assured him with a smile that Will Wherry, the
other boy, would do that better than either of them, and that he
would be entirely employed here.

The methodical master insisted however on making terms with the
boy's relations; and with some misgivings on Ambrose's part, the
two--since business hours were almost over--walked together to the
Temple and to the little house, where Perronel was ironing under her
window.

Ambrose need not have doubted.  The Dutch blood on either side was
stirred; and the good housewife commanded the little printer's
respect as he looked round on a kitchen as tidy as if it were in his
own country.  And the bargain was struck that Ambrose Birkenholt
should serve Master Hansen for his meals and two pence a week, while
he was to sleep at the little house of Mistress Randall, who would
keep his clothes and linen in order.

And thus it was that both Ambrose and Stephen Birkenholt had found
their vocations for the present, and both were fervent in them.
Master Headley pshawed a little when he heard that Ambrose had
engaged himself to a printer and a foreigner; and when he was told
it was to a friend of Tibble's, only shook his head, saying that
Tib's only fault was dabbling in matters of divinity, as if a plain
man could not be saved without them!  However, he respected the lad
for having known his own mind and not hung about in idleness, and he
had no opinion of clerks, whether monks or priests.  Indeed, the low
esteem in which the clergy as a class were held in London was one of
the very evil signs of the times.  Ambrose was invited to dine and
sup at the Dragon court every Sunday and holiday, and he was glad to
accept, since the hospitality was so free, and he thus was able to
see his brother and Tibble; besides that, it prevented him from
burthening Mistress Randall, whom he really liked, though he could
not see her husband, either in his motley or his plain garments,
without a shudder of repulsion.

Ambrose found that setting up type had not much more to do with the
study of new books than Stephen's turning the grindstone had with
fighting in the lists; and the mistakes he made in spelling from
right to left, and in confounding the letters, made him despair, and
prepare for any amount of just indignation from his master; but he
found on the contrary that Master Hansen had never had a pupil who
made so few blunders on the first trial, and augured well of him
from such a beginning.  Paper was too costly, and pressure too
difficult, for many proofs to be struck off, but Hansen could read
and correct his type as it stood, and assured Ambrose that practice
would soon give him the same power; and the correction was thus
completed, when Will Wherry, a big, stout fellow, came in to dinner-
-the stall being left during that time, as nobody came for books
during the dinner-hour, and Hansen, having an understanding with his
next neighbour, by which they took turns to keep guard against
thieves.

The master and the two lads dined together on the contents of a
cauldron, where pease and pork had been simmering together on the
stove all the morning.  Their strength was then united to work the
press and strike off a sheet, which the master scanned, finding only
one error in it.  It was a portion of Lilly's Grammar, and Ambrose
regarded it with mingled pride and delight, though he longed to go
further into those deeper revelations for the sake of which he had
come here.

Master Hansen then left the youths to strike off a couple of hundred
sheets, after which they were to wash the types and re-arrange the
letters in the compartments in order, whilst he returned to the
stall.  The customers requiring his personal attention were
generally late ones.  When all this was accomplished, and the pot
put on again in preparation for supper, the lads might use the short
time that remained as they would, and Hansen himself showed Ambrose
a shelf of books concealed by a blue curtain, whence he might read.

Will Wherry showed unconcealed amazement that this should be the
taste of his companion.  He himself hated the whole business, and
would never have adopted it, but that he had too many brothers for
all to take to the water on the Thames, and their mother was too
poor to apprentice them, and needed the small weekly pay the
Dutchman gave him.  He seemed a good-natured, dull fellow, whom no
doubt Hansen had hired for the sake of the strong arms, developed by
generations of oarsmen upon the river.  What he specially disliked
was that his master was a foreigner.  The whole court swarmed with
foreigners, he said, with the utmost disgust, as if they were
noxious insects.  They made provisions dear, and undersold honest
men, and he wondered the Lord Mayor did not see to it and drive them
out.  He did not SO much object to the Dutch, but the Spaniards--no
words could express his horror of them.

By and by, Ambrose going out to fetch some water from the conduit,
found standing by it a figure entirely new to him.  It was a young
girl of some twelve or fourteen years old, in the round white cap
worn by all of her age and sex; but from beneath it hung down two
thick plaits of the darkest hair he had ever seen, and though the
dress was of the ordinary dark serge with a coloured apron, it was
put on with an air that made it look like some strange and beautiful
costume on the slender, lithe, little form.  The vermilion apron was
further trimmed with a narrow border of white, edged again with deep
blue, and it chimed in with the bright coral earrings and necklace.
As Ambrose came forward the creature tried to throw a crimson
handkerchief over her head, and ran into the shelter of another
door, but not before Ambrose had seen a pair of large dark eyes so
like those of a terrified fawn that they seemed to carry him back to
the Forest.  Going back amazed, he asked his companion who the girl
he had seen could have been.

Will stared.  "I trow you mean the old blackamoor sword-cutler's
wench.  He is one of those pestilent strangers.  An 'Ebrew Jew who
worships Mahound and is too bad for the Spanish folk themselves."

This rather startled Ambrose, though he knew enough to see that the
accusations could not both be true, but he forgot it in the delight,
when Will pronounced the work done, of drawing back the curtain and
feasting his eyes upon the black backs of the books, and the black-
letter brochures that lay by them.  There were scarcely thirty, yet
he gloated on them as on an inexhaustible store, while Will,
whistling wonder at his taste, opined that since some one was there
to look after the stove, and the iron pot on it, he might go out and
have a turn at ball with Hob and Martin.

Ambrose was glad to be left to go over his coming feast.  There was
Latin, English, and, alas! baffling Dutch.  High or Low it was all
the same to him.  What excited his curiosity most was the
Enchiridion Militis Christiani of Erasmus--in Latin of course, and
that he could easily read--but almost equally exciting was a Greek
and Latin vocabulary; or again, a very thin book in which he
recognised the New Testament in the Vulgate.  He had heard chapters
of it read from the graceful stone pulpit overhanging the refectory
at Beaulieu, and, of course, the Gospels and Epistles at mass, but
they had been read with little expression and no attention; and that
Sunday's discourse had filled him with eagerness to look farther;
but the mere reading the titles of the books was pleasure enough for
the day, and his master was at home before he had fixed his mind on
anything.  Perhaps this was as well, for Lucas advised him what to
begin with, and how to divide his studies so as to gain a knowledge
of the Greek, his great ambition, and also to read the Scripture.

The master was almost as much delighted as the scholar, and it was
not till the curfew was beginning to sound that Ambrose could tear
himself away.  It was still daylight, and the door of the next
dwelling was open.  There, sitting on the ground cross-legged, in an
attitude such as Ambrose had never seen, was a magnificent old man,
with a huge long white beard, wearing, indeed, the usual dress of a
Londoner of the lower class, but the gown flowed round him in a
grand and patriarchal manner, corresponding with his noble, somewhat
aquiline features; and behind him Ambrose thought he caught a
glimpse of the shy fawn he had seen in the morning.



CHAPTER XI.  AY DI ME GRENADA



"In sooth it was a thing to weep
   If then as now the level plain
Beneath was spreading like the deep,
   The broad unruffled main.
If like a watch-tower of the sun
   Above, the Alpuxarras rose,
Streaked, when the dying day was done,
   "With evening's roseate snows."

ARCHBISHOP TRENCH.


When Mary Tudor, released by death from her first dreary marriage,
contracted for her brother's pleasure, had appeased his wrath at her
second marriage made to please herself, Henry VIII. was only too
glad to mark his assent by all manner of festivities; and English
chroniclers, instead of recording battles and politics, had only to
write of pageantries and tournaments during the merry May of the
year 1515--a May, be it remembered, which, thanks to the old style,
was at least ten days nearer to Midsummer than our present month.

How the two queens and all their court had gone a-maying on
Shooter's Hill, ladies and horses poetically disguised and labelled
with sweet summer titles, was only a nine days' wonder when the
Birkenholts had come to London, but the approaching tournament at
Westminster on the Whitsun holiday was the great excitement to the
whole population, for, with all its faults, the Court of bluff King
Hal was thoroughly genial, and every one, gentle and simple, might
participate in his pleasures.

Seats were reserved at the lists for the city dignitaries and their
families, and though old Mistress Headley professed that she ought
to have done with such vanities, she could not forbear from going to
see that her son was not too much encumbered with the care of little
Dennet, and that the child herself ran into no mischief.  Master
Headley himself grumbled and sighed, but he put himself into his
scarlet gown, holding that his presence was a befitting attention to
the king, glad to gratify his little daughter, and not without a
desire to see how his workmanship--good English ware--held out
against "mail and plate of Milan steel," the fine armour brought
home from France by the new Duke of Suffolk.  Giles donned his best
in the expectation of sitting in the places of honour as one of the
family, and was greatly disgusted when Kit Smallbones observed,
"What's all that bravery for?  The tilting match quotha?  Ha! ha! my
young springald, if thou see it at all, thou must be content to gaze
as thou canst from the armourers' tent, if Tibble there chooses to
be cumbered with a useless lubber like thee."

"I always sat with my mother when there were matches at Clarendon,"
muttered Giles, who had learnt at least that it was of no use to
complain of Smallbones' plain speaking.

"If folks cocker malapert lads at Sarum we know better here," was
the answer.

"I shall ask the master, my kinsman," returned the youth.

But he got little by his move.  Master Headley told him, not
unkindly, for he had some pity for the spoilt lad, that not the Lord
Mayor himself would take his own son with him while yet an
apprentice.  Tibble Steelman would indeed go to one of the
attendants' tents at the further end of the lists, where repairs to
armour and weapons might be needed, and would take an assistant or
two, but who they might be must depend on his own choice, and if
Giles had any desire to go, he had better don his working dress.

In fact, Tibble meant to take Edmund Burgess and one workman for
use, and one of the new apprentices for pleasure, letting them
change in the middle of the day.  The swagger of Giles actually
forfeited for him the first turn, which--though he was no favourite
with the men--would have been granted to his elder years and his
relationship to the master; but on his overbearing demand to enter
the boat which was to carry down a little anvil and charcoal
furnace, with a few tools, rivets, nails, and horse-shoes, Tibble
coolly returned that he needed no such gay birds; but if Giles chose
to be ready in his leathern coat when Stephen Birkenholt came home
at midday, mayhap he might change with him.

Stephen went joyously in the plainest of attire, though Tibble in
fur cap, grimy jerkin, and leathern apron was no elegant steersman;
and Edmund, who was at the age of youthful foppery, shrugged his
shoulders a little, and disguised the garments of the smithy with
his best flat cap and newest mantle.

They kept in the wake of the handsome barge which Master Headley
shared with his friend and brother alderman, Master Hope the draper,
whose young wife, in a beautiful black velvet hood and shining blue
satin kirtle, was evidently petting Dennet to her heart's content,
though the little damsel never lost an opportunity of nodding to her
friends in the plainer barge in the rear.

The Tudor tilting matches cost no lives, and seldom broke bones.
They were chiefly opportunities for the display of brilliant
enamelled and gilt armour, at the very acme of cumbrous
magnificence; and of equally gorgeous embroidery spread out over the
vast expanse provided by elephantine Flemish horses.  Even if the
weapons had not been purposely blunted, and if the champions had
really desired to slay one another, they would have found the task
very difficult, as in effect they did in the actual game of war.
But the spectacle was a splendid one, and all the apparatus was
ready in the armourers' tent, marked by St. George and the Dragon.
Tibble ensconced himself in the innermost corner with a "tractate,"
borrowed from his friend Lucas, and sent the apprentices to gaze
their fill at the rapidly filling circles of seats.  They saw King
Harry, resplendent in gilded armour--"from their own anvil, true
English steel," said Edmund, proudly--hand to her seat his sister
the bride, one of the most beautiful women then in existence, with a
lovely and delicate bloom on her fair face and exquisite Plantagenet
features.  No more royally handsome creatures could the world have
offered than that brother and sister, and the English world
appreciated them and made the lists ring with applause at the fair
lady who had disdained foreign princes to wed her true love, an
honest Englishman.

He--the cloth of frieze--in blue Milanese armour, made to look as
classical as possible, and with clasps and medals engraven from
antique gems--handed in Queen Katharine, whose dark but glowing
Spanish complexion made a striking contrast to the dazzling fairness
of her young sister-in-law.  Near them sat a stout burly figure in
episcopal purple, and at his feet there was a form which nearly took
away all Stephen's pleasure for the time.  For it was in motley, and
he could hear the bells jingle, while the hot blood rose in his
cheeks in the dread lest Burgess should detect the connection, or
recognise in the jester the grave personage who had come to
negotiate with Mr. Headley for his indentures, or worse still, that
the fool should see and claim him.

However, Quipsome Hal seemed to be exchanging drolleries with the
young dowager of France, who, sooth to say, giggled in a very
unqueenly manner at jokes which made the grave Spanish-born queen
draw up her stately head, and converse with a lady on her other
hand--an equally stately lady, somewhat older, with the straight
Plantagenet features, and by her side a handsome boy, who, though
only eight or nine years was tonsured, and had a little scholar's
gown.  "That," said Edmund, "is my Lady Countess of Salisbury, of
whom Giles Headley prates so much."

A tournament, which was merely a game between gorgeously equipped
princes and nobles, afforded little scope for adventure worthy of
record, though it gave great diversion to the spectators.  Stephen
gazed like one fascinated at the gay panoply of horse and man with
the huge plumes on the heads of both, as they rushed against one
another, and he shared with Edmund the triumph when the lance from
their armoury held good, the vexation if it were shivered.  All
would have been perfect but for the sight of his uncle, playing off
his drolleries in a manner that gave him a sense of personal
degradation.

To escape from the sight almost consoled him when, in the pause
after the first courses had been run, Tibble told him and Burgess to
return, and send Headley and another workman with a fresh bundle of
lances for the afternoon's tilting.  Stephen further hoped to find
his brother at the Dragon court, as it was one of those holidays
that set every one free, and separation began to make the brothers
value their meetings.

But Ambrose was not at the Dragon court, and when Stephen went in
quest of him to the Temple, Perronel had not seen him since the
early morning, but she said he seemed so much bitten with the little
old man's scholarship that she had small doubt that he would be
found poring over a book in Warwick Inner Yard.

Thither therefore did Stephen repair.  The place was nearly
deserted, for the inhabitants were mostly either artisans or that
far too numerous race who lived on the doles of convents, on the
alms of churchgoers, and the largesses scattered among the people on
public occasions, and these were for the most part pursuing their
vocation both of gazing and looking out for gain among the
spectators outside the lists.  The door that Stephen had been shown
as that of Ambrose's master was, however, partly open, and close
beside it sat in the sun a figure that amazed him.  On a small mat
or rug, with a black and yellow handkerchief over her head, and
little scarlet legs crossed under a blue dress, all lighted up by
the gay May sun, there slept the little dark, glowing maiden, with
her head best as it leant against the wall, her rosy lips half open,
her long black plaits on her shoulders.

Stepping up to the half-open door, whence he heard a voice reading,
his astonishment was increased.  At the table were his brother and
his master, Ambrose with a black book in hand, Lucas Hansen with
some papers, and on the ground was seated a venerable, white-bearded
old man, something between Stephen's notions of an apostle and of a
magician, though the latter idea predominated at sight of a long
parchment scroll covered with characters such as belonged to no
alphabet that he had ever dreamt of.  What were they doing to his
brother?  He was absolutely in an enchanter's den.  Was it a pixy at
the door, guarding it?  "Ambrose!" he cried aloud.

Everybody started.  Ambrose sprang to his feet, exclaiming,
"Stephen!"  The pixy gave a little scream and jumped up, flying to
the old man, who quietly rolled up his scroll.

Lucas rose up as Ambrose spoke.

"Thy brother?" said he.

"Yea--come in search of me," said Ambrose.

"Thou hadst best go forth with him," said Lucas.

"It is not well that youth should study over long," said the old
man.  "Thou hast aided us well, but do thou now unbend the bow.
Peace be with thee, my son."

Ambrose complied, but scarcely willingly, and the instant they had
made a few steps from the door, Stephen exclaimed in dismay, "Who--
what was it?  Have they bewitched thee, Ambrose?"

Ambrose laughed merrily.  "Not so.  It is holy lore that those good
men are reading."

"Nay now, Ambrose.  Stand still--if thou canst, poor fellow," he
muttered, and then made the sign of the cross three times over his
brother, who stood smiling, and said, "Art satisfied Stevie?  Or
wilt have me rehearse my Credo?"  Which he did, Stephen listening
critically, and drawing a long breath as he recognised each word,
pronounced without a shudder at the critical points.  "Thou art safe
so far," said Stephen.  "But sure he is a wizard.  I even beheld his
familiar spirit--in a fair shape doubtless--like a pixy!  Be not
deceived, brother.  Sorcery reads backwards--and I saw him so read
from that scroll of his.  Laughest thou!  Nay! what shall I do to
free thee?  Enter here!"

Stephen dragged his brother, still laughing, into the porch of the
nearest church, and deluged him with holy water with such good will,
that Ambrose, putting up his hands to shield his eyes, exclaimed,
"Come now, have done with this folly, Stephen--though it makes me
laugh to think of thy scared looks, and poor little Aldonza being
taken for a familiar spirit."  And Ambrose laughed as he had not
laughed for weeks.

"But what is it, then?"

"The old man is of thy calling, or something like it, Stephen, being
that he maketh and tempereth sword-blades after the prime Damascene
or Toledo fashion, and the familiar spirit is his little daughter."

Stephen did not however look mollified.  "Swordblades!  None have a
right to make them save our craft.  This is one of the rascaille
Spaniards who have poured into the city under favour of the queen to
spoil and ruin the lawful trade.  Though could you but have seen,
Ambrose, how our tough English ashwood in King Harry's hand--from
our own armoury too--made all go down before it, you would never
uphold strangers and their false wares that CAN only get the better
by sorcery."

"How thou dost harp upon sorcery!" exclaimed Ambrose.  "I must tell
thee the good old man's story as 'twas told to me, and then wilt
thou own that he is as good a Christian as ourselves--ay, or better-
-and hath little cause to love the Spaniards."

"Come on, then," said Stephen.  "Methought if we went towards
Westminster we might yet get where we could see the lists.  Such a
rare show, Ambrose, to see the King in English armour, ay, and
Master Headley's, every inch of it, glittering in the sun, so that
one could scarce brook the dazzling, on his horse like a rock
shattering all that came against him!  I warrant you the lances
cracked and shivered like faggots under old Purkis's bill-hook.  And
that you should liefer pore over crabbed monkish stuff with yonder
old men!  My life on it, there must be some spell!"

"No more than of old, when I was ever for book and thou for bow,"
said Ambrose; "but I'll make thee rueful for old Michael yet.  Hast
heard tell of the Moors in Spain?"

"Moors--blackamoors who worship Mahound and Termagant.  I saw a
blackamoor last week behind his master, a merchant of Genoa, in
Paul's Walk.  He looked like the devils in the Miracle Play at
Christ Church, with blubber lips and wool for hair.  I marvelled
that he did not writhe and flee when he came within the Minster, but
Ned Burgess said he was a christened man."

"Moors be not all black, neither be they all worshippers of
Mahound," replied Ambrose.

However, as Ambrose's information, though a few degrees more correct
and intelligent than his brother's, was not complete, it will be
better not to give the history of Lucas's strange visitors in his
words.

They belonged to the race of Saracen Arabs who had brought the arts
of life to such perfection in Southern Spain, but who had received
the general appellation of Moors from those Africans who were
continually reinforcing them, and, bringing a certain Puritan
strictness of Mohammedanism with them, had done much towards
destroying the highest cultivation among them before the Spanish
kingdoms became united, and finally triumphed over them.  During the
long interval of two centuries, while Castille was occupied by
internal wars, and Aragon by Italian conquests, there had been
little aggression on the Moorish borderland, and a good deal of
friendly intercourse both in the way of traffic and of courtesy, nor
had the bitter persecution and distrust of new converts then set in,
which followed the entire conquest of Granada.  Thus, when Ronda was
one of the first Moorish cities to surrender, a great merchant of
the unrivalled sword-blades whose secret had been brought from
Damascus, had, with all his family, been accepted gladly when he
declared himself ready to submit and receive baptism.  Miguel
Abenali was one of the sons, and though his conversion had at first
been mere compliance with his father's will and the family
interests, he had become sufficiently convinced of Christian truth
not to take part with his own people in the final struggle.  Still,
however, the inbred abhorrence of idolatry had influenced his manner
of worship, and when, after half a life-time, Granada had fallen,
and the Inquisition had begun to take cognisance of new Christians
from among the Moors as well as the Jews, there were not lacking
spies to report the absence of all sacred images or symbols from the
house of the wealthy merchant, and that neither he nor any of his
family had been seen kneeling before the shrine of Nuestra Senora.
The sons of Abenali did indeed feel strongly the power of the
national reaction, and revolted from the religion which they saw
cruelly enforced on their conquered countrymen.  The Moor had been
viewed as a gallant enemy, the Morisco was only a being to be
distrusted and persecuted; and the efforts of the good Bishop of
Granada, who had caused the Psalms, Gospels, and large portions of
the Breviary to be translated into Arabic, were frustrated by the
zeal of those who imagined that heresy lurked in the vernacular, and
perhaps that objections to popular practices might be strengthened.

By order of Cardinal Ximenes, these Arabic versions were taken away
and burnt; but Miguel Abenali had secured his own copy, and it was
what he there learnt that withheld him from flying to his countrymen
and resuming their faith when he found that the Christianity he had
professed for forty years was no longer a protection to him.  Having
known the true Christ in the Gospel, he could not turn back to
Mohammed, even though Christians persecuted in the Name they so
little understood.

The crisis came in 1507, when Ximenes, apparently impelled by the
dread that simulated conformity should corrupt the Church, quickened
the persecution of the doubtful "Nuevos Cristianos," and the Abenali
family, who had made themselves loved and respected, received
warning that they had been denounced, and that their only hope lay
in flight.

The two sons, high-spirited young men, on whom religion had far less
hold than national feeling, fled to the Alpuxarra Mountains, and
renouncing the faith of the persecutors, joined their countrymen in
their gallant and desperate warfare.  Their mother, who had long
been dead, had never been more than an outward Christian; but the
second wife of Abenali shared his belief and devotion with the
intelligence and force of character sometimes found among the
Moorish ladies of Spain.  She and her little ones fled with him in
disguise to Cadiz, with the precious Arabic Scriptures rolled round
their waists, and took shelter with an English merchant, who had had
dealings in sword-blades with Senor Miguel, and had been entertained
by him in his beautiful Saracenic house at Ronda with Eastern
hospitality.  This he requited by giving them the opportunity of
sailing for England in a vessel laden with Xeres sack; but the
misery of the voyage across the Bay of Biscay in a ship fit for
nothing but wine, was excessive, and creatures reared in the lovely
climate and refined luxury of the land of the palm and orange,
exhausted too already by the toils of the mountain journey, were
incapable of enduring it, and Abenali's brave wife and one of her
children were left beneath the waves of the Atlantic.  With the one
little girl left to him, he arrived in London, and the
recommendation of his Cadiz friend obtained for him work from a
dealer in foreign weapons, who was not unwilling to procure them
nearer home.  Happily for him, Moorish masters, however rich, were
always required to be proficients in their own trade; and thus
Miguel, or Michael as he was known in England, was able to maintain
himself and his child by the fabrication of blades that no one could
distinguish from those of Damascus.  Their perfection was a work of
infinite skill, labour, and industry, but they were so costly, that
their price, and an occasional job of inlaying gold in other metal,
sufficed to maintain the old man and his little daughter.  The
armourers themselves were sometimes forced to have recourse to him,
though unwillingly, for he was looked on with distrust and dislike
as an interloper of foreign birth, belonging to no guild.  A
Biscayan or Castillian of the oldest Christian blood incurred
exactly the same obloquy from the mass of London craftsmen and
apprentices, and Lucas himself had small measure of favour, though
Dutchmen were less alien to the English mind than Spaniards, and his
trade did not lead to so much rivalry and competition.

As much of this as Ambrose knew or understood he told to Stephen,
who listened in a good deal of bewilderment, understanding very
little, but with a strong instinct that his brother's love of
learning was leading him into dangerous company.  And what were they
doing on this fine May holiday, when every one ought to be out
enjoying themselves?

"Well, if thou wilt know," said Ambrose, pushed hard, "there is one
Master William Tindal, who hath been doing part of the blessed
Evangel into English, and for better certainty of its correctness,
Master Michael was comparing it with his Arabic version, while I
overlooked the Latin."

"O Ambrose, thou wilt surely run into trouble.  Know you not how
nurse Joan used to tell us of the burning of the Lollard books?"

"Nay, nay, Stevie, this is no heresy.  'Tis such work as the great
scholar, Master Erasmus, is busied on--ay, and he is loved and
honoured by both the Archbishops and the King's grace!  Ask Tibble
Steelman what he thinks thereof."

"Tibble Steelman would think nought of a beggarly stranger calling
himself a sword cutler, and practising the craft without
prenticeship or license," said Stephen, swelling with indignation.
"Come on, Ambrose, and sweep the cobwebs from thy brain.  If we
cannot get into our own tent again, we can mingle with the
outskirts, and learn how the day is going, and how our lances and
breastplates have stood where the knaves' at the Eagle have gone
like reeds and egg-shells--just as I threw George Bates, the
prentice at the Eagle yesterday, in a wrestling match at the butts
with the trick old Diggory taught me."



CHAPTER XII.  A KING IN A QUAGMIRE



   For my pastance
Hunt, sing, and dance,
My heart is set
All godly sport
To my comfort.
Who shall me let?

THE KING'S BALADE, attributed to Henry VIII.


Life was a rough, hearty thing in the early sixteenth century,
strangely divided between thought and folly, hardship and splendour,
misery and merriment, toil and sport.

The youths in the armourer's household had experienced little of
this as yet in their country life, but in London they could not but
soon begin to taste both sides of the matter.  Master Headley
himself was a good deal taken up with city affairs, and left the
details of his business to Tibble Steelman and Kit Smallbones,
though he might always appear on the scene, and he had a wonderful
knowledge of what was going on.

The breaking-in and training of the two new country lads was
entirely left to them and to Edmund Burgess.  Giles soon found that
complaints were of no avail, and only made matters harder for him,
and that Tibble Steelman and Kit Smallbones had no notion of
favouring their master's cousin.

Poor fellow, he was very miserable in those first weeks.  The actual
toil, to which he was an absolute novice, though nominally three
years an apprentice, made his hands raw, and his joints full of
aches, while his groans met with nothing but laughter; and he
recognised with great displeasure, that more was laid on him than on
Stephen Birkenholt.  This was partly in consideration of Stephen's
youth, partly of his ready zeal and cheerfulness.  His hands might
be sore too, but he was rather proud of it than otherwise, and his
hero worship of Kit Smallbones made him run on errands, tug at the
bellows staff, or fetch whatever was called for with a bright
alacrity that won the foremen's hearts, and it was noted that he who
was really a gentleman, had none of the airs that Giles Headley
showed.

Giles began by some amount of bullying, by way of slaking his wrath
at the preference shown for one whom he continued to style a
beggarly brat picked up on the heath; but Stephen was good-humoured,
and accustomed to give and take, and they both found their level, as
well in the Dragon court as among the world outside, where the
London prentices were a strong and redoubtable body, with rude, not
to say cruel, rites of initiation among themselves, plenty of
rivalries and enmities between house and house, guild and guild, but
a united, not to say ferocious, esprit de corps against every one
else.  Fisticuffs and wrestlings were the amenities that passed
between them, though always with a love of fair play so long as no
cowardice, or what was looked on as such, was shown, for there was
no mercy for the weak or weakly.  Such had better betake themselves
at once to the cloister, or life was made intolerable by constant
jeers, blows, baiting and huntings, often, it must be owned,
absolutely brutal.

Stephen and Giles had however passed through this ordeal.  The
letter to John Birkenholt had been despatched by a trusty clerk
riding with the Judges of Assize, whom Mistress Perronel knew might
be safely trusted, and who actually brought back a letter which
might have emanated from the most affectionate of brothers, giving
his authority for the binding Stephen apprentice to the worshipful
Master Giles Headley, and sending the remainder of the boy's
portion.

Stephen was thereupon regularly bound apprentice to Master Headley.
It was a solemn affair, which took place in the Armourer's Hall in
Coleman Street, before sundry witnesses.  Harry Randall, in his
soberest garb and demeanour, acted as guardian to his nephew, and
presented him, clad in the regulation prentice garb--"flat round
cap, close-cut hair, narrow falling bands, coarse side coat, close
hose, cloth stockings," coat with the badge of the Armourers'
Company, and Master Headley's own dragon's tail on the sleeve, to
which was added a blue cloak marked in like manner.  The
instructions to apprentices were rehearsed, beginning, "Ye shall
constantly and devoutly on your knees every day serve God, morning
and evening"--pledging him to "avoid evil company, to make speedy
return when sent on his master's business, to be fair, gentle and
lowly in speech and carriage with all men," and the like.

Mutual promises were interchanged between him and his master,
Stephen on his knees; the indentures were signed, for Quipsome Hal
could with much ado produce an autograph signature, though his
penmanship went no further, and the occasion was celebrated by a
great dinner of the whole craft at the Armourers' Hall, to which the
principal craftsmen who had been apprentices, such as Tibble
Steelman and Kit Smallbones, were invited, sitting at a lower table,
while the masters had the higher one on the dais, and a third was
reserved for the apprentices after they should have waited on their
masters--in fact it was an imitation of the orders of chivalry,
knights, squires, and pages, and the gradation of rank was as
strictly observed as by the nobility.  Giles, considering the feast
to be entirely in his honour, though the transfer of his indentures
had been made at Salisbury, endeavoured to come out in some of his
bravery, but was admonished that such presumption might be punished,
the first time, at his master's discretion, the second time, by a
whipping at the Hall of his Company, and the third time by six
months being added to the term of his apprenticeship.

Master Randall was entertained in the place of honour, where he
comported himself with great gravity, though he could not resist
alarming Stephen with an occasional wink or gesture as the boy
approached in the course of the duties of waiting at the upper
board--a splendid sight with cups and flagons of gold and silver,
with venison and capons and all that a City banquet could command
before the invention of the turtle.

There was drinking of toasts, and among the foremost was that of
Wolsey, who had freshly received his nomination of cardinal, and
whose hat was on its way from Rome--and here the jester could not
help betraying his knowledge of the domestic policy of the
household, and telling the company how it had become known that the
scarlet hat was actually on the way, but in a "varlet's budget--a
mere Italian common knave, no better than myself," quoth Quipsome
Hal, whereat his nephew trembled standing behind his chair,
forgetting that the decorous solid man in the sad-coloured gown and
well-crimped ruff, neatest of Perronel's performances, was no such
base comparison for any varlet.  Hal went on to describe, however,
how my Lord of York had instantly sent to stay the messenger on his
handing at Dover, and equip him with all manner of costly silks by
way of apparel, and with attendants, such as might do justice to his
freight, "that so," he said, "men may not rate it but as a scarlet
cock's comb, since all men be but fools, and the sole question is,
who among them hath wit enough to live by his folly."  Therewith he
gave a wink that so disconcerted Stephen as nearly to cause an upset
of the bowl of perfumed water that he was bringing for the washing
of hands.

Master Headley, however, suspected nothing, and invited the grave
Master Randall to attend the domestic festival on the presentation
of poor Spring's effigy at the shrine of St. Julian.  This was to
take place early in the morning of the 14th of September, Holy Cross
Day, the last holiday in the year that had any of the glory of
summer about it, and on which the apprentices claimed a prescriptive
right to go out nutting in St. John's Wood, and to carry home their
spoil to the lasses of their acquaintance.

Tibble Steelman had completed the figure in bronze, with a silver
collar and chain, not quite without protest that the sum had better
have been bestowed in alms.  But from his master's point of view
this would have been giving to a pack of lying beggars and thieves
what was due to the holy saint; no one save Tibble, who could do and
say what he chose, could have ventured on a word of remonstrance on
such a subject; and as the full tide of iconoclasm, consequent on
the discovery of the original wording of the second commandment, had
not yet set in, Tibble had no more conscientious scruple against
making the figure, than in moulding a little straight-tailed lion
for Lord Harry Percy's helmet.

So the party in early morning heard their mass, and then, repairing
to St. Julian's pillar, while the rising sun came peeping through
the low eastern window of the vaulted Church of St. Faith, Master
Headley on his knees gave thanks for his preservation, and then put
forward his little daughter, holding on her joined hands the figure
of poor Spring, couchant, and beautifully modelled in bronze with
all Tibble's best skill.

Hal Randall and Ambrose had both come up from the little home where
Perronel presided, for the hour was too early for the jester's
absence to be remarked in the luxurious household of the Cardinal
elect, and he even came to break his fast afterwards at the Dragon
court, and held such interesting discourse with old Dame Headley on
the farthingales and coifs of Queen Katharine and her ladies, that
she pronounced him a man wondrous wise and understanding, and
declared Stephen happy in the possession of such a kinsman.

"And whither away now, youngsters?" he said, as he rose from table.

"To St. John's Wood!  The good greenwood, uncle," said Ambrose.

"Thou too, Ambrose?" said Stephen joyfully.  "For once away from
thine ink and thy books!"

"Ay," said Ambrose, "mine heart warms to the woodlands once more.
Uncle, would that thou couldst come."

"Would that I could, boy!  We three would show these lads of
Cockayne what three foresters know of wood craft!  But it may not
be.  Were I once there the old blood might stir again and I might
bring you into trouble, and ye have not two faces under one hood as
I have!  So fare ye well, I wish you many a bagful of nuts!"

The four months of city life, albeit the City was little bigger than
our moderate sized country towns, and far from being an unbroken
mass of houses, had yet made the two young foresters delighted to
enjoy a day of thorough country in one another's society.  Little
Dennet longed to go with them, but the prentice world was far too
rude for little maidens to be trusted in it, and her father held out
hopes of going one of these days to High Park as he called it, while
Edmund and Stephen promised her all their nuts, and as many
blackberries as could be held in their flat caps.

"Giles has promised me none," said Dennet, with a pouting lip, "nor
Ambrose."

"Why sure, little mistress, thou'lt have enough to crack thy teeth
on!" said Edmund Burgess.

"They OUGHT to bring theirs to me," returned the little heiress of
the Dragon court with an air of offended dignity that might have
suited the heiress of the kingdom.

Giles, who looked on Dennet as a kind of needful appendage to the
Dragon, a piece of property of his own, about whom he need take no
trouble, merely laughed and said, "Want must be thy master then."
But Ambrose treated her petulance in another fashion.  "Look here,
pretty mistress," said he, "there dwells by me a poor little maid
nigh about thine age, who never goeth further out than to St. Paul's
minster, nor plucketh flower, nor hath sweet cake, nor manchet
bread, nor sugar-stick, nay, and scarce ever saw English hazel-nut
nor blackberry.  'Tis for her that I want to gather them."

"Is she thy master's daughter?" demanded Dennet, who could admit the
claims of another princess.

"Nay, my master hath no children, but she dwelleth near him."

"I will send her some, and likewise of mine own comfits and cakes,"
said Mistress Dennet.  "Only thou must bring all to me first."

Ambrose laughed and said, "It's a bargain then, little mistress?"

"I keep my word," returned Dennet marching away, while Ambrose
obeyed a summons from good-natured Mistress Headley to have his
wallet filled with bread and cheese like those of her own prentices.

Off went the lads under the guidance of Edmund Burgess, meeting
parties of their own kind at every turn, soon leaving behind them
the City bounds, as they passed under New Gate, and by and by
skirting the fields of the great Carthusian monastery, or Charter
House, with the burial-ground given by Sir Walter Manny at the time
of the Black Death.  Beyond came marshy ground through which they
had to pick their way carefully, over stepping-stones--this being no
other than what is now the Regent's Park, not yet in any degree
drained by the New River, but all quaking ground, overgrown with
rough grass and marsh-plants, through which Stephen and Ambrose
bounded by the help of stout poles with feet and eyes well used to
bogs, and knowing where to look for a safe footing, while many a
flat-capped London lad floundered about and sank over his yellow
ankles or left his shoes behind him, while lapwings shrieked pee-
wheet, and almost flapped him with their broad wings, and moorhens
dived in the dark pools, and wild ducks rose in long families.

Stephen was able to turn the laugh against his chief adversary and
rival, George Bates of the Eagle, who proposed seeking for the
lapwing's nest in hopes of a dainty dish of plovers' eggs; being too
great a cockney to remember that in September the contents of the
eggs were probably flying over the heather, as well able to shift
for themselves as their parents.

Above all things the London prentices were pugnacious, but as every
one joined in the laugh against George, and he was, besides, stuck
fast on a quaking tussock of grass, afraid to proceed or advance, he
could not have his revenge.  And when the slough was passed, and the
slight rise leading to the copse of St. John's Wood was attained,
behold, it was found to be in possession of the lower sort of lads,
the black guard as they were called.  They were of course quite as
ready to fight with the prentices as the prentices were with them,
and a battle royal took place, all along the front of the hazel
bushes--in which Stephen of the Dragon and George of the Eagle
fought side by side.  Sticks and fists were the weapons, and there
were no very severe casualties before the prentices, being the
larger number as well as the stouter and better fed, had routed
their adversaries, and driven them off towards Harrow.

There was crackling of boughs and filling of bags, and cracking of
nuts, and wild cries in pursuit of startled hare or rabbit, and
though Ambrose and Stephen indignantly repelled the idea of St.
John's Wood being named in the same day with their native forest, it
is doubtful whether they had ever enjoyed themselves more; until
just as they were about to turn homeward, whether moved by his
hostility to Stephen, or by envy at the capful of juicy
blackberries, carefully covered with green leaves, George Bates,
rushing up from behind, shouted out "Here's a skulker!  Here's one
of the black guard!  Off to thy fellows, varlet!" at the same time
dealing a dexterous blow under the cap, which sent the blackberries
up into Ambrose's face.  "Ha! ha!" shouted the ill-conditioned
fellow.  "So much for a knave that serves rascally strangers!  Here!
hand over that bag of nuts!"

Ambrose was no fighter, but in defence of the bag that was to
purchase a treat for little Aldonza, he clenched his fists, and bade
George Bates come and take them if he would.  The quiet scholarly
boy was, however, no match for the young armourer, and made but poor
reply to the buffets of his adversary, who had hold of the bag, and
was nearly choking him with the string round his neck.

However, Stephen had already missed his brother, and turning round,
shouted out that the villain Bates was mauling him, and rushed back,
falling on Ambrose's assailant with a sudden well-directed pounding
that made him hastily turn about, with cries of "Two against one!"

"Not at all," said Stephen.  "Stand by, Ambrose; I'll give the
coward his deserts."

In fact, though the boys were nearly of a size, George somewhat the
biggest, Stephen's country activity, and perhaps the higher spirit
of his gentle blood, generally gave him the advantage, and on this
occasion he soon reduced Bates to roar for mercy.

"Thou must purchase it!" said Stephen.  "Thy bag of nuts, in return
for the berries thou hast wasted!"

Peaceable Ambrose would have remonstrated, but Stephen was
implacable.  He cut the string, and captured the bag, then with a
parting kick bade Bates go after his comrades, for his Eagle was
nought but a thieving kite.

Bates made off pretty quickly, but the two brothers tarried a little
to see how much damage the blackberries had suffered, and to repair
the losses as they descended into the bog by gathering some choice
dewberries.

"I marvel these fine fellows 'scaped our company," said Stephen
presently.

"Are we in the right track, thinkst thou?  Here is a pool I marked
not before," said Ambrose anxiously.

"Nay, we can't be far astray while we see St. Paul's spire and the
Tower full before us," said Stephen.  "Plainer marks than we had at
home."

"That may be.  Only where is the safe footing?" said Ambrose.  "I
wish we had not lost sight of the others!"

"Pish! what good are a pack of City lubbers!" returned Stephen.
"Don't we know a quagmire when we see one, better than they do?"

"Hark, they are shouting for us."

"Not they!  That's a falconer's call.  There's another whistle!
See, there's the hawk.  She's going down the wind, as I'm alive,"
and Stephen began to bound wildly along, making all the sounds and
calls by which falcons were recalled, and holding up as a lure a
lapwing which he had knocked down.  Ambrose, by no means so
confident in bog-trotting as his brother, stood still to await him,
hearing the calls and shouts of the falconer coming nearer, and
presently seeing a figure, flying by the help of a pole over the
pools and dykes that here made some attempt at draining the waste.
Suddenly, in mid career over one of these broad ditches, there was a
collapse, and a lusty shout for help as the form disappeared.
Ambrose instantly perceived what had happened, the leaping pole had
broken to the downfall of its owner.  Forgetting all his doubts as
to bogholes and morasses, he grasped his own pole, and sprang from
tussock to tussock, till he had reached the bank of the ditch or
water-course in which the unfortunate sportsman was floundering.  He
was a large, powerful man, but this was of no avail, for the slough
afforded no foothold.  The further side was a steep built up of
sods, the nearer sloped down gradually, and though it was not
apparently very deep, the efforts of the victim to struggle out had
done nothing but churn up a mass of black muddy water in which he
sank deeper every moment, and it was already nearly to his shoulders
when with a cry of joy, half choked however, by the mud, he cried,
"Ha! my good lad!  Are there any more of ye?"

"Not nigh, I fear," said Ambrose, beholding with some dismay the
breadth of the shoulders which were all that appeared above the
turbid water.

"Soh!  Lie down, boy, behind that bunch of osier.  Hold out thy
pole.  Let me see thine hands.  Thou art but a straw, but, our Lady
be my speed!  Now hangs England on a pair of wrists!"

There was a great struggle, an absolute effort for life, and but for
the osier stump Ambrose would certainly have been dragged into the
water, when the man had worked along the pole, and grasping his
hands, pulled himself upwards.  Happily the sides of the dyke became
harder higher up, and did not instantly yield to the pressure of his
knees, and by the time Ambrose's hands and shoulders felt nearly
wrenched from their sockets, the stem of the osier had been
attained, and in another minute, the rescued man, bareheaded,
plastered with mud, and streaming with water, sat by him on the
bank, panting, gasping, and trying to gather breath and clear his
throat from the mud he had swallowed.

"Thanks, good lad, well done," he articulated.  "Those fellows!
where are they?"  And feeling in his bosom, he brought out a gold
whistle suspended by a chain.  "Blow it," he said, taking off the
chain, "my mouth is too full of slime."

Ambrose blew a loud shrill call, but it seemed to reach no one but
Stephen, whom he presently saw dashing towards them.

"Here is my brother coming, sir," he said, as he gave his endeavours
to help the stranger to free himself from the mud that clung to him,
and which was in some places thick enough to be scraped off with a
knife.  He kept up a continual interchange of exclamations at his
plight, whistles and shouts for his people, and imprecations on
their tardiness, until Stephen was near enough to show that the hawk
had been recovered, and then he joyfully called out, "Ha! hast thou
got her?  Why, flat-caps as ye are, ye put all my fellows to shame!
How now, thou errant bird, dost know thy master, or take him for a
mud wall?  Kite that thou art, to have led me such a dance!  And
what's your name, my brave lads?  Ye must have been bred to wood-
craft."

Ambrose explained both their parentage and their present occupation,
but was apparently heeded but little.  "Wot ye how to get out of
this quagmire?" was the question.

"I never was here before, sir," said Stephen; "but yonder lies the
Tower, and if we keep along by this dyke, it must lead us out
somewhere."

"Well said, boy, I must be moving, or the mud will dry on me, and I
shall stand here as though I were turned to stone by the Gorgon's
head!  So have with thee!  Go on first, master hawk-tamer.  What
will bear thee will bear me!"

There was an imperative tone about him that surprised the brothers,
and Ambrose looking at him from head to foot, felt sure that it was
some great man at the least, whom it had been his hap to rescue.
Indeed, he began to have further suspicions when they came to a pool
of clearer water, beyond which was firmer ground, and the stranger
with an exclamation of joy, borrowed Stephen's cap, and, scooping up
the water with it, washed his face and head, disclosing the golden
hair and beard, fair complexion, and handsome square face he had
seen more than once before.

He whispered to Stephen "'Tis the King!"

"Ha! ha!" laughed Henry, "hast found him out, lads?  Well, it may
not be the worse for ye.  Pity thou shouldst not be in the Forest
still, my young falconer, but we know our good city of London to
well to break thy indentures.  And thou--"

He was turning to Ambrose when further shouts were heard.  The King
hallooed, and bade the boys do so, and in a few moments more they
were surrounded by the rest of the hawking party, full of dismay at
the king's condition, and deprecating his anger for having lost him.

"Yea," said Henry; "an it had not been for this good lad, ye would
never have heard more of the majesty of England!  Swallowed in a
quagmire had made a new end for a king, and ye would have to brook
the little Scot."

The gentlemen who had come up were profuse in lamentations.  A horse
was brought up for the king's use, and he prepared to mount, being
in haste to get into dry clothes.  He turned round, however, to the
boys, and said, "I'll not forget you, my lads.  Keep that!" he
added, as Ambrose, on his knee, would have given him back the
whistle, "'tis a token that maybe will serve thee, for I shall know
it again.  And thou, my black-eyed lad--My purse, Howard!"

He handed the purse to Stephen--a velvet hag richly wrought with
gold, and containing ten gold angels, besides smaller money--bidding
them divide, like good brothers as he saw they were, and then
galloped off with his train.

Twilight was coming on, but following in the direction of the
riders, the boys were soon on the Islington road.  The New Gate was
shut by the time they reached it, and their explanation that they
were belated after a nutting expedition would not have served them,
had not Stephen produced the sum of twopence which softened the
surliness of the guard.

It was already dark, and though curfew had not yet sounded,
preparations were making for lighting the watch-fires in the open
spaces and throwing chains across the streets, but the little door
in the Dragon court was open, and Ambrose went in with his brother
to deliver up his nuts to Dennet and claim her promise of sending a
share to Aldonza.

They found their uncle in his sober array sitting by Master Headley,
who was rating Edmund and Giles for having lost sight of them, the
latter excusing himself by grumbling out that he could not be
marking all Stephen's brawls with George Bates.

When the two wanderers appeared, relief took the form of anger, and
there were sharp demands why they had loitered.  Their story was
listened to with many exclamations:  Dennet jumped for joy, her
grandmother advised that the angels should be consigned to her own
safe keeping, and when Master Headley heard of Henry's scruples
about the indentures, he declared that it was a rare wise king who
knew that an honest craft was better than court favour.

"Yet mayhap he might do something for thee, friend Ambrose," added
the armourer.  "Commend thee to some post in his chapel royal, or
put thee into some college, since such is thy turn.  How sayst thou,
Master Randall, shall he send in this same token, and make his
petition?"

"If a foo--if a plain man may be heard where the wise hath spoken,"
said Randall, "he had best abstain.  Kings love not to be minded of
mishaps, and our Hal's humour is not to be reckoned on!  Lay up the
toy in case of need, but an thou claim overmuch he may mind thee in
a fashion not to thy taste."

"Sure our King is of a more generous mould!" exclaimed Mrs. Headley.

"He is like other men, good mistress, just as you know how to have
him, and he is scarce like to be willing to be minded of the taste
of mire, or of floundering like a hog in a salt marsh.  Ha! ha!" and
Quipsome Hal went off into such a laugh as might have betrayed his
identity to any one more accustomed to the grimaces of his
professional character, but which only infected the others with the
same contagious merriment.  "Come thou home now," he said to
Ambrose; "my good woman hath been in a mortal fright about thee, and
would have me come out to seek after thee.  Such are the women folk,
Master Headley.  Let them have but a lad to look after, and they'll
bleat after him like an old ewe that has lost her lamb."

Ambrose only stayed for Dennet to divide the spoil, and though the
blackberries had all been lost or crushed, the little maiden kept
her promise generously, and filled the bag not only with nuts but
with three red-checked apples, and a handful of comfits, for the
poor little maid who never tasted fruit or sweets.



CHAPTER XIII.  A LONDON HOLIDAY



"Up then spoke the apprentices tall
Living in London, one and all."

Old Ballad.


Another of the many holidays of the Londoners was enjoyed on the
occasion of the installation of Thomas Wolsey as Cardinal of St.
Cecilia, and Papal Legate.

A whole assembly of prelates and "lusty gallant gentlemen" rode out
to Blackheath to meet the Roman envoy, who, robed in full splendour,
with St. Peter's keys embroidered on back and breast and on the
housings of his mule, appeared at the head of a gallant train in the
papal liveries, two of whom carried the gilded pillars, the insignia
of office, and two more, a scarlet and gold-covered box or casket
containing the Cardinal's hat.  Probably no such reception of the
dignity was ever prepared elsewhere, and all was calculated to give
magnificent ideas of the office of Cardinal and of the power of the
Pope to those who had not been let into the secret that the
messenger had been met at Dover; and thus magnificently fitted out
to satisfy the requirements of the butcher's son of Ipswich, and of
one of the most ostentatious of courts.

Old Gaffer Martin Fulford had muttered in his bed that such pomp had
not been the way in the time of the true old royal blood, and that
display had come in with the upstart slips of the Red Rose--as he
still chose to style the Tudors; and he maundered away about the
beauty and affability of Edward IV. till nobody could understand
him, and Perronel only threw in her "ay, grandad," or "yea, gaffer,"
when she thought it was expected of her.

Ambrose had an unfailing appetite for the sermons of Dean Colet, who
was to preach on this occasion in Westminster Abbey, and his uncle
had given him counsel how to obtain standing ground there, entering
before the procession.  He was alone, his friends Tibble and Lucas
both had that part of the Lollard temper which loathed the pride and
wealth of the great political clergy, and in spite of their
admiration for the Dean they could not quite forgive his taking part
in the pomp of such a rare show.

But Ambrose's devotion to the Dean, to say nothing of youthful
curiosity, outweighed all those scruples, and as he listened, he was
carried along by the curious sermon in which the preacher likened
the orders of the hierarchy below to that of the nine orders of the
Angels, making the rank of Cardinal correspond to that of the
Seraphim, aglow with love.  Of that holy flame, the scarlet robes
were the type to the spiritualised mind of Colet, while others saw
in them only the relic of the imperial purple of old Rome; and some
beheld them as the token that Wolsey was one step nearer the supreme
height that he coveted so earnestly.  But the great and successful
man found himself personally addressed, bidden not to be puffed up
with his own greatness, and stringently reminded of the highest
Example of humility, shown that he that exalteth himself shall be
abased, and he that humbleth himself be exalted.  The preacher
concluded with a strong personal exhortation to do righteousness and
justice alike to rich and poor, joined with truth and mercy, setting
God always before him.

The sermon ended, Wolsey knelt at the altar, and Archbishop Wareham,
who, like his immediate predecessors, held legatine authority,
performed the act of investiture, placing the scarlet hat with its
many hoops and tassels on his brother primate's head, after which a
magnificent Te Deum rang through the beautiful church, and the
procession of prelates, peers, and ecclesiastics of all ranks in
their richest array formed to escort the new Cardinal to banquet at
his palace with the King and Queen.

Ambrose, stationed by a column, let the throng rush, tumble, and
jostle one another to behold the show, till the Abbey was nearly
empty, while he tried to work out the perplexing question whether
all this pomp and splendour were truly for the glory of God, or
whether it were a delusion for the temptation of men's souls.  It
was a debate on which his old and his new guides seemed to him at
issue, and he was drawn in both directions--now by the beauty,
order, and deep symbolism of the Catholic ritual, now by the
spirituality and earnestness of the men among whom he lived.  At one
moment the worldly pomp, the mechanical and irreverent worship, and
the gross and vicious habits of many of the clergy repelled him; at
another the reverence and conservatism of his nature held him fast.

Presently he felt a hand on his shoulder, and started, "Lost in a
stud, as we say at home, boy," said the jester, resplendent in a
bran new motley suit.  "Wilt come in to the banquet?  'Tis open
house, and I can find thee a seat without disclosing the kinship
that sits so sore on thy brother.  Where is he?"

"I have not seen him this day."

"That did I," returned Randall, "as I rode by on mine ass.  He was
ruffling it so lustily that I could not but give him a wink, the
which my gentleman could by no means stomach!  Poor lad!  Yet there
be times, Ambrose, when I feel in sooth that mine office is the only
honourable one, since who besides can speak truth?  I love my lord;
he is a kind, open-handed master, and there's none I would so
willingly serve, whether by jest or earnest, but what is he but that
which I oft call him in joke--the greater fool than I, selling peace
and ease, truth and hope, this life and the next, for yonder scarlet
hat, which is after all of no more worth than this jingling head-
gear of mine."

"Deafening the spiritual ears far more, it may be," said Ambrose,
"since humiles exallaverint."

It was no small shock that there, in the midst of the nave, the
answer was a bound, like a ball, almost as high as the capital of
the column by which they stood.  "There's exaltation!" said Randall
in a low voice, and Ambrose perceived that some strangers were in
sight.  "Come, seek thy brother out, boy, and bring him to the
banquet.  I'll speak a word to Peter Porter, and he'll let you in.
There'll be plenty of fooling all the afternoon, before my namesake
King Hal, who can afford to be an honester man in his fooling than
any about him, and whose laugh at a hearty jest is goodly to hear."

Ambrose thanked him and undertook the quest.  They parted at the
great west door of the Abbey, where, by way of vindicating his own
character for buffoonery, Randall exclaimed, "Where be mine ass?"
and not seeing the animal, immediately declared, "There he is!" and
at the same time sprang upon the back and shoulders of a gaping and
astonished clown who was gazing at the rear of the procession.

The crowd applauded with shouts of coarse laughter, but a man, who
seemed to belong to the victim, broke in with an angry oath, and
"How now, sir?"

"I cry you mercy," quoth the jester; "'twas mine own ass I sought,
and if I have fallen on thine, I will but ride him to York House and
then restore him.  So ho! good jackass," crossing his ankles on the
poor fellow's chest so that he could not be shaken off.

The comrade lifted a cudgel, but there was a general cry of "My Lord
Cardinal's jester, lay not a finger on him!"

But Harry Randall was not one to brook immunity on the score of his
master's greatness.  In another second he was on his feet, had
wrested the staff from the hands of his astounded beast of burden,
flourished it round his head after the most approved manner of
Shirley champions at Lyndhurst fair, and called to his adversary to
"come on."

It did not take many rounds before Hal's dexterity had floored his
adversary, and the shouts of "Well struck, merry fool!"  "Well
played, Quipsome Hal!" were rising high when the Abbot of
Westminster's yeomen were seen making way through the throng, which
fell back in terror on either side as they came to seize on the
brawlers in their sacred precincts.

But here again my Lord Cardinal's fool was a privileged person, and
no one laid a hand on him, though his blood being up, he would,
spite of his gay attire, have enjoyed a fight on equal terms.  His
quadruped donkey was brought up to him amid general applause, but
when he looked round for Ambrose, the boy had disappeared.

The better and finer the nature that displayed itself in Randall,
the more painful was the sight of his buffooneries to his nephew,
and at the first leap, Ambrose had hurried away in confusion.  He
sought his brother here, there, everywhere, and at last came to the
conclusion that Stephen must have gone home to dinner.  He walked
quickly across the fields separating Westminster from the City of
London, hoping to reach Cheapside before the lads of the Dragon
should have gone out again; but just as he was near St. Paul's,
coming round Amen Corner, he heard the sounds of a fray.  "Have at
the country lubbers!  Away with the moonrakers!  Flat-caps, come
on!"  "Hey! lads of the Eagle!  Down with the Dragons!  Adders
Snakes--s-s s-s-s!"

There was a kicking, struggling mass of blue backs and yellow legs
before him, from out of which came "Yah!  Down with the Eagles!
Cowards!  Kites!  Cockneys!"  There were plenty of boys, men, women
with children in their arms hallooing on, "Well done, Eagle!"  "Go
it, Dragon!"

The word Dragon filled the quiet Ambrose with hot impulse to defend
his brother.  All his gentle, scholarly habits gave way before that
cry, and a shout that he took to be Stephen's voice in the midst of
the melee.

He was fairly carried out of himself, and doubling his fists, fell
on the back of the nearest boys, intending to break through to his
brother, and he found an unexpected ally.  Will Wherry's voice
called out, "Have with you, comrade!"--and a pair of hands and arms
considerably stouter and more used to fighting than his own, began
to pommel right and left with such good will that they soon broke
through to the aid of their friends; and not before it was time, for
Stephen, Giles, and Edmund, with their backs against the wall, were
defending themselves with all their might against tremendous odds;
and just as the new allies reached them, a sharp stone struck Giles
in the eye, and levelled him with the ground, his head striking
against the wall.  Whether it were from alarm at his fall, or at the
unexpected attack in the rear, or probably from both causes, the
assailants dispersed in all directions without waiting to perceive
how slender the succouring force really was.

Edmund and Stephen were raising up the unlucky Giles, who lay quite
insensible, with blood pouring from his eye.  Ambrose tried to wipe
it away, and there were anxious doubts whether the eye itself were
safe.  They were some way from home, and Giles was the biggest and
heaviest of them all.

"Would that Kit Smallbones were here!" said Stephen, preparing to
take the feet, while Edmund took the shoulders.

"Look here," said Will Wherry, pulling Ambrose's sleeve, "our yard
is much nearer, and the old Moor, Master Michael, is safe to know
what to do for him.  That sort of cattle always are leeches.  He
wiled the pain from my thumb when 'twas crushed in our printing
press.  Mayhap if he put some salve to him, he might get home on his
own feet."

Edmund listened.  "There's reason in that," he said.  "Dost know
this leech, Ambrose?"

"I know him well.  He is a good old man, and wondrous wise.  Nay, no
black arts; but he saith his folk had great skill in herbs and the
like, and though he be no physician by trade, he hath much of their
lore."

"Have with thee, then," returned Edmund, "the rather that Giles is
no small weight, and the guard might come on us ere we reached the
Dragon."

"Or those cowardly rogues of the Eagle might set on us again," added
Stephen; and as they went on their way to Warwick Inner Yard, he
explained that the cause of the encounter had been that Giles had
thought fit to prank himself in his father's silver chain, and thus
George Bates, always owing the Dragon a grudge, and rendered
specially malicious since the encounter on Holy Rood Day, had raised
the cry against him, and caused all the flat-caps around to make a
rush at the gaud as lawful prey.

"'Tis clean against prentice statutes to wear one, is it not?" asked
Ambrose.

"Ay," returned Stephen; "yet none of us but would stand up for our
own comrade against those meddling fellows of the Eagle."

"But," added Edmund, "we must beware the guard, for if they looked
into the cause of the fray, our master might be called on to give
Giles a whipping in the Company's hall, this being a second offence
of going abroad in these vanities."

Ambrose went on before to prepare Miguel Abenali, and entreat his
good offices, explaining that the youth's master, who was also his
kinsman, would be sure to give handsome payment for any good offices
to him.  He scarcely got out half the words; the grand old Arab
waved his hand and said, "When the wounded is laid before the tent
of Ben Ali, where is the question of recompense?  Peace be with
thee, my son!  Bring him hither.  Aldonza, lay the carpet yonder,
and the cushions beneath the window, where I may have light to look
to his hurt."

Therewith he murmured a few words in an unknown tongue, which, as
Ambrose understood, were an invocation to the God of Abraham to
bless his endeavours to heal the stranger youth, but which happily
were spoken before the arrival of the others, who would certainly
have believed them an incantation.

The carpet though worn threadbare, was a beautiful old Moorish rug,
once glowing with brilliancy, and still rich in colouring, and the
cushion was of thick damask faded to a strange pale green.  All in
that double-stalled partition, once belonging to the great earl's
war-horses, was scrupulously clean, for the Christian Moor had
retained some of the peculiar virtues born of Mohammedanism and of
high civilisation.  The apprentice lads tramped in much as if they
had been entering a wizard's cave, though Stephen had taken care to
assure Edmund of his application of the test of holy water.

Following the old man's directions, Edmund and Stephen deposited
their burden on the rug.  Aldonza brought some warm water, and
Abenali washed and examined the wound, Aldonza standing by and
handing him whatever he needed, now and then assisting with her
slender brown hands in a manner astonishing to the youths, who stood
by anxious and helpless, white their companion began to show signs
of returning life.

Abenali pronounced that the stone had missed the eyeball, but the
cut and bruise were such as to require constant bathing, and the
blow on the head was the more serious matter, for when the patient
tried to raise himself he instantly became sick and giddy, so that
it would be wise to leave him where he was.  This was much against
the will of Edmund Burgess, who shared all the prejudices of the
English prentice against the foreigner--perhaps a wizard and rival
in trade; but there was no help for it, and he could only insist
that Stephen should mount guard over the bed until he had reported
to his master, and returned with his orders.  Therewith he departed,
with such elaborate thanks and courtesies to the host, as betrayed a
little alarm in the tall apprentice, who feared not quarter-staff,
nor wrestler, and had even dauntlessly confronted the masters of his
guild!

Stephen, sooth to say, was not very much at ease; everything around
had such a strange un-English aspect, and he imploringly muttered,
"Bide with me, Am!" to which his brother willingly assented, being
quite as comfortable in Master Michael's abode as by his aunt's own
hearth.

Giles meanwhile lay quiet, and then, as his senses became less
confused, and he could open one eye, he looked dreamily about him,
and presently began to demand where he was, and what had befallen
him, grasping at the hand of Ambrose as if to hold fast by something
familiar; but he still seemed too much dazed to enter into the
explanation, and presently murmured something about thirst.  Aldonza
came softly up with a cup of something cool.  He looked very hard at
her, and when Ambrose would have taken it from her hand to give it
to him, he said, "Nay!  SHE!"

And SHE, with a sweet smile in her soft, dark, shady eyes, and on
her full lips, held the cup to his lips far more daintily and
dexterously than either of his boy companions could have done; then
when he moaned and said his head and eye pained him, the white-
bearded elder came and bathed his brow with the soft sponge.  It
seemed all to pass before him like a dream, and it was not much
otherwise with his unhurt companions, especially Stephen, who
followed with wonder the movements made by the slippered feet of
father and daughter upon the mats which covered the stone flooring
of the old stable.  The mats were only of English rushes and flags,
and had been woven by Abenali and the child; but loose rushes
strewing the floor were accounted a luxury in the Forest, and even
at the Dragon court the upper end of the hall alone had any
covering.  Then the water was heated, and all such other operations
carried on over a curious round vessel placed over charcoal; the
window and the door had dark heavy curtains; and a matted partition
cut off the further stall, no doubt to serve as Aldonza's chamber.
Stephen looked about for something to assure him that the place
belonged to no wizard enchanter, and was glad to detect a large
white cross on the wall, with a holy-water stoup beneath it, but of
images there were none.

It seemed to him a long time before Master Headley's ruddy face,
full of anxiety, appeared at the door.

Blows were, of course, no uncommon matter; perhaps so long as no
permanent injury was inflicted, the master-armourer had no objection
to anything that might knock the folly out of his troublesome young
inmate; but Edmund had made him uneasy for the youth's eye, and
still more so about the quarters he was in, and he had brought a
mattress and a couple of men to carry the patient home, as well as
Steelman, his prime minister, to advise him.

He had left all these outside, however, and advanced, civilly and
condescendingly thanking the sword-cutler, in perfect ignorance that
the man who stood before him had been born to a home that was an
absolute palace compared with the Dragon court.  The two men were a
curious contrast.  There stood the Englishman with his sturdy form
inclining, with age, to corpulence, his broad honest face telling of
many a civic banquet, and his short stubbly brown grizzled heard;
his whole air giving a sense of worshipful authority and weight; and
opposite to him the sparely made, dark, thin, aquiline-faced, white-
bearded Moor, a far smaller man in stature, yet with a patriarchal
dignity, refinement, and grace in port and countenance, belonging as
it were to another sphere.

Speaking English perfectly, though with a foreign accent, Abenali
informed Master Headley that his young kinsman would by Heaven's
blessing soon recover without injury to the eye, though perhaps a
scar might remain.

Mr. Headley thanked him heartily for his care, and said that he had
brought men to carry the youth home, if he could not walk; and then
he went up to the couch with a hearty "How now, Giles?  So thou hast
had hard measure to knock the foolery out of thee, my poor lad.  But
come, we'll have thee home, and my mother will see to thee."

"I cannot walk," said Giles, heavily, hardly raising his eyes, and
when he was told that two of the men waited to bear him home, he
only entreated to be let alone.  Somewhat sharply, Mr. Headley
ordered him to sit up and make ready, but when he tried to do so, he
sank back with a return of sickness and dizziness.

Abenali thereupon intreated that he might be left for that night,
and stepping out into the court so as to be unheard by the patient,
explained that the brain had had a shock, and that perfect quiet for
some hours to come was the only way to avert a serious illness,
possibly dangerous.  Master Headley did not like the alternative at
all, and was a good deal perplexed.  He beckoned to Tibble Steelman,
who had all this time been talking to Lucas Hansen, and now came up
prepared with his testimony that this Michael was a good man and
true, a godly one to boot, who had been wealthy in his own land and
was a rare artificer in his own craft.

"Though he hath no license to practise it here," threw in Master
Headley, sotto voce; but he accepted the assurance that Michael was
a good Christian, and, with his daughter, regularly went to mass;
and since better might not be, he reluctantly consented to leave
Giles under his treatment, on Lucas reiterating the assurance that
he need have no fears of magic or foul play of any sort.  He then
took the purse that hung at his girdle, and declared that Master
Michael (the title of courtesy was wrung from him by the stately
appearance of the old man) must be at no charges for his cousin.

But Abenali with a grace that removed all air of offence from his
manner, returned thanks for the intention, but declared that it
never was the custom of the sons of Ali to receive reward for the
hospitality they exercised to the stranger within their gates.  And
so it was that Master Headley, a good deal puzzled, had to leave his
apprentice under the roof of the old sword-cutler for the night at
least.

"'Tis passing strange," said he, as he walked back; "I know not what
my mother will say, but I wish all may be right.  I feel--I feel as
if I had left the lad Giles with Abraham under the oak tree, as we
saw him in the miracle play!"

This description did not satisfy Mrs. Headley, indeed she feared
that her son was likewise bewitched; and when, the next morning,
Stephen, who had been sent to inquire for the patient, reported him
better, but still unable to be moved, since he could not lift his
head without sickness, she became very anxious.  Giles was
transformed in her estimate from a cross-grained slip to poor Robin
Headley's boy, the only son of a widow, and nothing would content
her but to make her son conduct her to Warwick Inner Yard to inspect
matters, and carry thither a precious relic warranted proof against
all sorcery.

It was with great trepidation that the good old dame ventured, but
the result was that she was fairly subdued by Abenali's patriarchal
dignity.  She had never seen any manners to equal his, not EVEN when
King Edward the Fourth had come to her father's house at the
Barbican, chucked her under the chin, and called her a dainty duck!

It was Aldonza, however, who specially touched her feelings.  Such a
sweet little wench, with the air of being bred in a kingly or
knightly court, to be living there close to the very dregs of the
city was a scandal and a danger--speaking so prettily too, and
knowing how to treat her elders.  She would be a good example for
Dennet, who, sooth to say, was getting too old for spoilt-child
sauciness to be always pleasing, while as to Giles, he could not be
in better quarters.  Mrs. Headley, well used to the dressing of the
burns and bruises incurred in the weapon smiths' business, could not
but confess that his eye had been dealt with as skilfully as she
could have done it herself.



CHAPTER XIV.  THE KNIGHT OF THE BADGER



"I am a gentleman of a company."

SHAKESPEARE.


Giles Headley's accident must have amounted to concussion of the
brain, for though he was able to return to the Dragon in a couple of
days, and the cut over his eye was healing fast, he was weak and
shaken, and did not for several weeks recover his usual health.  The
noise and heat of the smithy were distressing to him, and there was
no choice but to let him lie on settles, sun himself on the steps,
and attempt no work.

It had tamed him a good deal.  Smallbones said the letting out of
malapert blood was wholesome, and others thought him still under a
spell; but he seemed to have parted with much of his arrogance,
either because he had not spirits for self-assertion, or because
something of the grand eastern courtesy of Abenali had impressed
him.  For intercourse with the Morisco had by no means ceased.
Giles went, as long as the injury required it, to have the hurt
dressed, and loitered in the Inner Yard a long time every day, often
securing some small dainty for Aldonza--an apple, a honey cake, a
bit of marchpane, a dried plum, or a comfit.  One day he took her a
couple of oranges.  To his surprise, as he entered, Abenali looked
up with a strange light in his eyes, and exclaimed, "My son! thy
scent is to my nostrils as the court of my father's house!" Then, as
he beheld the orange, he clasped his hands, took it in them, and
held it to his breast, pouring out a chant in an unknown tongue,
while the tears flowed down his cheeks.

"Father, father!" Aldonza cried, terrified, while Giles marvelled
whether the orange worked on him like a spell.  But he perceived
their amazement, and spoke again in English, "I thank thee, my son!
Thou hast borne me back for a moment to the fountain in my father's
house, where ye grow, ye trees of the unfading leaf, the spotless
blossom, and golden fruit!  Ah Ronda!  Ronda!  Land of the sunshine,
the deep blue sky, and snow-topped hills!  Land where are the graves
of my father and mother!  How pines and sickens the heart of the
exile for thee!  O happy they who died beneath the sword or flame,
for they knew not the lonely home-longing of the exile.  Ah! ye
golden fruits!  One fragrant breath of thee is as a waft of the joys
of my youth!  Are ye foretastes of the fruits of Paradise, the true
home to which I may yet come, though I may never, never see the
towers and hills of Ronda more?"

Giles knew not what to make of this outburst.  He kept it to himself
as too strange to be told.  The heads of the family were willing
that he should carry these trifles to the young child of the man who
would accept no reward for his hospitality.  Indeed, Master Headley
spent much consideration on how to recompense the care bestowed on
his kinsman.

Giles suggested that Master Michael had just finished the most
beautiful sword blade he had ever seen, and had not yet got a
purchaser for it; it was far superior to the sword Tibble had just
completed for my Lord of Surrey.  Thereat the whole court broke into
an outcry; that any workman should be supposed to turn out any kind
of work surpassing Steelman's was rank heresy, and Master Headley
bluntly told Giles that he knew not what he was talking of!  He
might perhaps purchase the blade by way of courtesy and return of
kindness, but--good English workmanship for him!

However, Giles was allowed to go and ask the price of the blade, and
bring it to be looked at.  When he returned to the court he found,
in front of the building where finished suits were kept for display,
a tall, thin, wiry, elderly man, deeply bronzed, and with a scar on
his brow.  Master Headley and Tibble were both in attendance, Tib
measuring the stranger, and Stephen, who was standing at a
respectful distance, gave Giles the information that this was the
famous Captain of Free-lances, Sir John Fulford, who had fought in
all the wars in Italy, and was going to fight in them again, but
wanted a suit of "our harness."

The information was hardly needed, for Sir John, in a voice loud
enough to lead his men to the battle-field, and with all manner of
strong asseverations in all sorts of languages, was explaining the
dints and blows that had befallen the mail he had had from Master
Headley eighteen years ago, when he was but a squire; how his helmet
had endured tough blows, and saved his head at Novara, but had been
crushed like an egg shell by a stone from the walls at Barletta,
which had nearly been his own destruction:  and how that which he at
present wore (beautifully chased and in a classical form) was taken
from a dead Italian Count on the field of Ravenna, but always sat
amiss on him; and how he had broken his good sword upon one of the
rascally Swiss only a couple of months ago at Marignano.  Having
likewise disabled his right arm, and being well off through the
payment of some ransoms, he had come home partly to look after his
family, and partly to provide himself with a full suit of English
harness, his present suit being a patchwork of relics of numerous
battle-fields.  Only one thing he desired, a true Spanish sword, not
only Toledo or Bilboa in name, but nature.  He had seen execution
done by the weapons of the soldiers of the Great Captain, and been
witness to the endurance of their metal, and this made him demand
whether Master Headley could provide him with the like.

Giles took the moment for stepping forward and putting Abenali's
work into the master's hand.  The Condottiere was in raptures.  He
pronounced it as perfect a weapon as Gonzalo de Cordova himself
could possess; showed off its temper and his own dexterity by
piercing and cutting up an old cuirass, and invited the bystanders
to let him put it to further proof by letting him slice through an
apple placed on the open palm of the hand.

Giles's friendship could not carry him so far as to make the
venture; Kit Smallbones observed that he had a wife and children,
and could not afford to risk his good right hand on a wandering
soldier's bravado; Edmund was heard saying, "Nay, nay, Steve, don't
be such a fool," but Stephen was declaring he would not have the
fellow say that English lads hung back from what rogues of France
and Italy would dare.

"No danger for him who winceth not," said the knight.

Master Headley, a very peaceful citizen in his composition in spite
of his trade, was much inclined to forbid Stephen from the
experiment, but he refrained, ashamed and unwilling to daunt a high
spirit; and half the household, eager for the excitement, rushed to
the kitchen in quest of apples, and brought out all the women to
behold, and add a clamour of remonstrance.  Sir John, however,
insisted that they should all be ordered back again.  "Not that the
noise and clamour of women folk makes any odds to me," said the grim
old warrior, "I've seen too many towns taken for that, but it might
make the lad queasy, and cost him a thumb or so."

Of course this renewed the dismay and excitement, and both Tibble
and his master entreated Stephen to give up the undertaking if he
felt the least misgiving as to his own steadiness, arguing that they
should not think him any more a craven than they did Kit Smallbones
or Edmund Burgess.  But Stephen's mind was made up, his spirit was
high, and he was resolved to go through with it.

He held out his open hand, a rosy-checked apple was carefully laid
on it.  The sword flashed through the air--divided in half the apple
which remained on Stephen's palm.  There was a sharp shriek from a
window, drowned in the acclamations of the whole court, while the
Captain patted Stephen on the shoulder, exclaiming, "Well done, my
lad.  There's the making of a tall fellow in thee!  If ever thou art
weary of making weapons and wouldst use them instead, seek out John
Fulford, of the Badger troop, and thou shalt have a welcome.  Our
name is the Badger, because there's no troop like us for digging out
mines beneath the walls."

A few months ago such an invitation would have been bliss to
Stephen.  Now he was bound in all honour and duty to his master, and
could only thank the knight of the Badger, and cast a regretful eye
at him, as he drank a cup of wine, and flung a bag of gold and
silver, supplemented by a heavy chain, to Master Headley, who
prudently declined working for Free Companions, unless he were paid
beforehand; and, at the knight's request, took charge of a
sufficient amount to pay his fare back again to the Continent.  Then
mounting a tall, lean, bony horse, the knight said he should call
for his armour on returning from Somerset, and rode off, while
Stephen found himself exalted as a hero in the eyes of his
companions for an act common enough at feats of arms among modern
cavalry, but quite new to the London flat-caps.  The only sufferer
was little Dennet, who had burst into an agony of crying at the
sight, needed that Stephen should spread out both hands before her,
and show her the divided apple, before she would believe that his
thumb was in its right place, and at night screamed out in her sleep
that the ill-favoured man was cutting off Stephen's hands.

The sword was left behind by Sir John in order that it might be
fitted with a scabbard and belt worthy of it; and on examination,
Master Headley and Tibble both confessed that they could produce
nothing equal to it in workmanship, though Kit looked with contempt
at the slight weapon of deep blue steel, with lines meandering on it
like a watered silk, and the upper part inlaid with gold wire in
exquisite arabesque patterns.  He called it a mere toy, and muttered
something about sorcery, and men who had been in foreign parts not
thinking honest weight of English steel good enough for them.

Master Headley would not trust one of the boys with the good silver
coins that had been paid as the price of the sword--French crowns
and Milanese ducats, with a few Venetian gold bezants--but he bade
them go as guards to Tibble, for it was always a perilous thing to
carry a sum of money through the London streets.  Tibble was not an
unwilling messenger.  He knew Master Michael to be somewhat of his
own way of thinking, and he was a naturally large-minded man who
could appreciate skill higher than his own without jealousy.
Indeed, he and his master held a private consultation on the mode of
establishing a connection with Michael and profiting by his ability.

To have lodged him at the Dragon court and made him part of the
establishment might have seemed the most obvious way, but the dogged
English hatred and contempt of foreigners would have rendered this
impossible, even if Abenali himself would have consented to give up
his comparative seclusion and live in a crowd and turmoil.

But he was thankful to receive and execute orders from Master
Headley, since so certain a connection would secure Aldonza from
privation such as the child had sometimes had to endure in the
winter; when, though the abstemious Eastern nature needed little
food, there was great suffering from cold and lack of fuel.  And
Tibble moreover asked questions and begged for instructions in some
of the secrets of the art.  It was an effort to such a prime
artificer as Steelman to ask instruction from any man, especially a
foreigner, but Tibble had a nature of no common order, and set
perfection far above class prejudice; and moreover, he felt Abenali
to be one of those men who had their inner eyes devotedly fixed on
the truth, though little knowing where the quest would lead them.

On his side Abenali underwent a struggle.  "Woe is me!" he said.
"Wottest thou, my son, that the secrets of the sword of light and
swiftness are the heritage that Abdallah Ben Ali brought from
Damascus in the hundred and fifty-third year of the flight of him
whom once I termed the prophet; nor have they departed from our
house, but have been handed on from father to son.  And shall they
be used in the wars of the stranger and the Christian?"

"I feared it might be thus," said Tibble.

"And yet," went on the old man, as if not hearing him, "wherefore
should I guard the secret any longer?  My sons?  Where are they?
They brooked not the scorn and hatred of the Castillian which
poisoned to them the new faith.  They cast in their lot with their
own people, and that their bones may lie bleaching on the mountains
is the best lot that can have befallen the children of my youth and
hope.  The house of Miguel Abenali is desolate and childless, save
for the little maiden who sits by my hearth in the land of my exile!
Why should I guard it longer for him who may wed her, and whom I may
never behold?  The will of Heaven be done!  Young man, if I bestow
this knowledge on thee, wilt thou swear to be as a father to my
daughter, and to care for her as thine own?"

It was a good while since Tibble had been called a young man, and as
he listened to the flowing Eastern periods in their foreign
enunciation, he was for a moment afraid that the price of the secret
was that he should become the old Moor's son-in-law!  His seared and
scarred youth had precluded marriage, and he entertained the low
opinion of women frequent in men of superior intellect among the
uneducated.  Besides, the possibilities of giving umbrage to Church
authorities were dawning on him, and he was not willing to form any
domestic ties, so that in every way such a proposition would have
been unwelcome to him.  But he had no objection to pledge himself to
fatherly guardianship of the pretty child in case of a need that
might never arise.  So he gave the promise, and became a pupil of
Abenali, visiting Warwick Inner Yard with his master's consent
whenever he could be spared, while the workmanship at the Dragon
began to profit thereby.

The jealousy of the Eagle was proportionately increased.  Alderman
Itillyeo, the head of the Eagle, was friendly enough to Mr. Headley,
but it was undeniable that they were the rival armourers of London,
dividing the favours of the Court equally between them, and the
bitterness of the emulation increased the lower it went in the
establishment.  The prentices especially could hardly meet without
gibes and sneers, if nothing worse, and Stephen's exploit had a
peculiar flavour because it was averred that no one at the Eagle
would have done the like.

But it was not till the Sunday that Ambrose chanced to hear of the
feat, at which he turned quite pale, but he was prouder of it than
any one else, and although he rejoiced that he had not seen it
performed, he did not fail to boast of it at home, though Perronel
began by declaring that she did not care for the mad pranks of
roistering prentices; but presently she paused, as she stirred her
grandfather's evening posset, and said, "What saidst thou was the
strange soldier's name?"

"Fulford--Sir John Fulford" said Ambrose.  "What?  I thought not of
it, is not that Gaffer's name?"

"Fulford, yea!  Mayhap--" and Perronel sat down and gave an odd sort
of laugh of agitation--"mayhap 'tis mine own father."

"Shouldst thou know him, good aunt?" cried Ambrose, much excited.

"Scarce," she said.  "I was not seven years old when he went to the
wars--if so be he lived through the battle--and he reeked little of
me, being but a maid.  I feared him greatly and so did my mother.
'Twas happier with only Gaffer!  Where saidst thou he was gone?"

Ambrose could not tell, but he undertook to bring Stephen to answer
all queries on the subject.  His replies that the Captain was gone
in quest of his family to Somersetshire settled the matter, since
there had been old Martin Fulford's abode, and there John Fulford
had parted with his wife and father.  They did not, however, tell
the old man of the possibility of his son's being at home, he had
little memory, and was easily thrown into a state of agitation;
besides, it was a doubtful matter how the Condottiere would feel as
to the present fortunes of the family.  Stephen was to look out for
his return in quest of his suit of armour, inform him of his
father's being alive, and show him the way to the little house by
the Temple Gardens; but Perronel gave the strictest injunctions that
her husband's profession should not be explained.  It would be quite
enough to say that he was of the Lord Cardinal's household.

Stephen watched, but the armour was finished and Christmas passed by
before anything was seen of the Captain.  At last, however, he did
descend on the Dragon court, looking so dilapidated that Mr. Headley
rejoiced in the having received payment beforehand.  He was louder
voiced and fuller of strange oaths than ever, and in the utmost
haste, for he had heard tidings that "there was to be a lusty game
between the Emperor and the Italians, and he must have his share."

Stephen made his way up to speak to him, and was received with "Ha,
my gallant lad!  Art weary of hammer and anvil?  Wouldst be a brave
Badger, slip thine indentures, and hear helm and lance ring in good
earnest?"

"Not so, sir," said Stephen, "but I have been bidden to ask if thou
hast found thy father?"

"What's that to thee, stripling?  When thou hast cut thy wisdom
teeth, thou'lt know old fathers be not so easy found.  'Twas a wild
goose chase, and I wot not what moved me to run after it.  I met
jolly comrades enough, bumpkins that could drink with an honest
soldier when they saw him, but not one that ever heard the name of
Fulford."

"Sir," said Stephen, "I know an old man named Fulford.  His
granddaughter is my uncle's wife, and they dwell by the Temple."

The intelligence seemed more startling and less gratifying than
Stephen had expected.  Sir John demanded whether they were poor, and
declared that he had better have heard of them when his purse was
fuller.  He had supposed that his wife had given him up and found a
fresh mate, and when he heard of her death, he made an exclamation
which might be pity, but had in it something of relief.  He showed
more interest about his old father; but as to his daughter, if she
had been a lad now, a' might have been a stout comrade by this time,
ready to do the Badger credit.  Yea, his poor Kate was a good lass,
but she was only a Flemish woman and hadn't the sense to rear aught
but a whining little wench, who was of no good except to turn fools'
heads, and she was wedded and past all that by this time.

Stephen explained that she was wedded to one of the Lord Cardinal's
meine.

"Ho!" said the Condottiere, pausing, "be that the butcher's boy that
is pouring out his gold to buy scarlet hats, if not the three
crowns.  'Tis no bad household wherein to have a footing.  Saidst
thou I should find my wench and the old Gaffer there?"

Stephen had to explain, somewhat to the disappointment of the
Captain, who had, as it appeared, in the company of three or four
more adventurous spirits like himself, taken a passage in a vessel
lying off Gravesend, and had only turned aside to take up his new
armour and his deposit of passage-money.  He demurred a little, he
had little time to spare, and though, of course, he could take boat
at the Temple Stairs, and drop down the river, he observed that it
would have been a very different thing to go home to the old man
when he first came back with a pouch full of ransoms and plunder,
whereas now he had barely enough to carry him to the place of
meeting with his Badgers.  And there was the wench too--he had
fairly forgotten her name.  Women were like she wolves for greed
when they had a brood of whelps.

Stephen satisfied him that there was no danger on that score, and
heard him muttering, that it was no harm to secure a safe harbour in
case a man hadn't the luck to be knocked on the head ere he grew too
old to trail a pike.  And he would fain see the old man.

So permission was asked for Stephen to show the way to Master
Randall's, and granted somewhat reluctantly, Master Headley saying,
"I'll have thee back within an hour, Stephen Birkenholt, and look
thou dost not let thy brain be set afire with this fellow's windy
talk of battles and sieges, and deeds only fit for pagans and
wolves."

"Ay!" said Tibble, perhaps with a memory of the old fable, "better
be the trusty mastiff than the wolf."

And like the wolf twitting the mastiff with his chain, the soldier
was no sooner outside the door of the Dragon court before he began
to express his wonder how a lad of mettle could put up with a flat
cap, a blue gown, and the being at the beck and call of a greasy
burgher, when a bold, handsome young knave like him might have the
world before him and his stout pike.

Stephen was flattered, but scarcely tempted.  The hard selfishness
and want of affection of the Condottiere shocked him, while he
looked about, hoping some of his acquaintance would see him in
company with this tall figure clanking in shining armour, and with a
knightly helmet and gilt spurs.  The armour, new and brilliant,
concealed the worn and shabby leathern dress beneath, and gave the
tall, spare figure a greater breadth, diminishing the look of a
hungry wolf which Sir John Fulford's aspect suggested.  However, as
he passed some of the wealthier stalls, where the apprentices,
seeing the martial figure, shouted, "What d'ye lack, sir knight?"
and offered silk and velvet robes and mantles, gay sword knots, or
even rich chains, under all the clamour, Stephen heard him swearing
by St. George what a place this would be for a sack, if his Badgers
were behind him.

"If that poor craven of a Warbeck had had a spark of valour in him,"
quoth he, as he passed a stall gay with bright tankards and flagons,
"we would have rattled some of that shining gear about the lazy
citizens' ears!  He, jolly King Edward's son!  I'll never give faith
to it!  To turn his back when there was such a booty to be had for
the plundering."

"He might not have found it so easy.  Our trainbands are sturdy
enough," said Stephen, whose esprit de corps was this time on the
Londoners' side, but the knight of the Badger snapped his fingers,
and said, "So much for your burgher trainbands!  All they be good
for with their show of fight is to give honest landsknechts a good
reason to fall on to the plunder, if so be one is hampered by a
squeamish prince.  But grammercy to St. George, there be not many of
that sort after they he once fleshed!"

Perhaps a year ago, when fresh from the Forest, Stephen might have
been more captivated by the notion of adventure and conquest.  Now
that he had his place in the community and looked on a civic
position with wholesome ambition, Fulford's longings for havoc in
these peaceful streets made his blood run cold.  He was glad when
they reached their destination, and he saw Perronel with bare arms,
taking in some linen cuffs and bands from a line across to the
opposite wall.  He could only call out, "Good naunt, here he be!"

Perronel turned round, the colour rising in her cheeks, with an
obeisance, but trembling a good deal.  "How now, wench?  Thou art
grown a buxom dame.  Thou makst an old man of me," said the soldier
with a laugh.  "Where's my father?  I have not the turning of a cup
to stay, for I'm come home poor as a cat in a plundered town, and am
off to the wars again; but hearing that the old man was nigh at
hand, I came this way to see him, and let thee know thou art a
knight's daughter.  Thou art indifferent comely, girl, what's thy
name? but not the peer of thy mother when I wooed her as one of the
bonny lasses of Bruges."

He gave a kind of embrace, while she gave a kind of gasp of
"Welcome, sir," and glanced somewhat reproachfully at Stephen for
not having given her more warning.  The cause of her dismay was
plain as the Captain, giving her no time to precede him, strode into
the little chamber, where Hal Randall, without his false beard or
hair, and in his parti-coloured hose, was seated by the cupboard-
like bed, assisting old Martin Fulford to take his midday meal.

"Be this thine husband, girl?  Ha! ha!  He's more like a jolly friar
come in to make thee merry when the good man is out!" exclaimed the
visitor, laughing loudly at his own rude jest; but heeding little
either Hal's appearance or his reply, as he caught the old man's
bewildered eyes, and heard his efforts to utter his name.

For eighteen years had altered John Fulford less than either his
father or his daughter, and old Martin recognised him instantly, and
held out the only arm he could use, while the knight, softened,
touched, and really feeling more natural affection than Stephen had
given him credit for, dropped on his knee, breaking into indistinct
mutterings with rough but hearty greetings, regretting that he had
not found his father sooner, when his pouch was full, lamenting the
change in him, declaring that he must hurry away now, but promising
to come back with sacks of Italian ducats to provide for the old
man.

Those who could interpret the imperfect utterance, now further
choked by tears and agitation, knew that there was a medley of
broken rejoicings, blessings, and weepings, in the midst of which
the soldier, glad perhaps to end a scene where he became
increasingly awkward and embarrassed, started up, hastily kissed the
old man on each of his withered cheeks, gave another kiss to his
daughter, threw her two Venetian ducats, bidding her spend them for
the old man, and he would bring a pouchful more next time, and
striding to the door, bade Stephen call a boat to take him down to
Gravesend.

Randall, who had in the meantime donned his sober black gown in the
inner chamber, together with a dark hood, accompanied his newly
found father-in-law down the river, and Stephen would fain have gone
too, but for the injunction to return within the hour.

Perronel had hurried back to her grandfather's side to endeavour to
compose him after the shock of gladness.  But it had been too much
for his enfeebled powers.  Another stroke came on before the day was
over, and in two or three days more old Martin Fulford was laid to
rest, and his son's ducats were expended on masses for his soul's
welfare.



CHAPTER XV.  HEAVE HALF A BRICK AT HIM



"For strangers then did so increase,
   By reason of King Henry's queen,
And privileged in many a place
   To dwell, as was in London seen.
Poor tradesmen had small dealing then
   And who but strangers bore the bell,
Which was a grief to Englishmen
   To see them here in London dwell."

Ill May Day, by CHURCHILL, a Contemporary Poet.


Time passed on, and Edmund Burgess, who had been sent from York to
learn the perfection of his craft, completed his term and returned
to his home, much regretted in the Dragon court, where his good
humour and good sense had generally kept the peace, both within and
without.

Giles Headley was now the eldest prentice.  He was in every way
greatly improved, thoroughly accepting his position, and showing
himself quite ready both to learn and to work; but he had not the
will or the power of avoiding disputes with outsiders, or turning
them aside with a merry jest; and rivalries and quarrels with the
armoury at the Eagle began to increase.  The Dragon, no doubt,
turned out finer workmanship, and this the Eagle alleged was wholly
owing to nefarious traffic with the old Spanish or Moorish sorcerer
in Warwick Inner Yard, a thing unworthy of honest Englishmen.  This
made Giles furious, and the cry never failed to end in a fight, in
which Stephen supported the cause of the one house, and George Bates
and his comrades of the other.

It was the same with even the archery at Mile End, where the butts
were erected, and the youth contended with the long bow, which was
still considered as the safeguard of England.  King Henry often
looked in on these matches, and did honour to the winners.  One
match there was in especial, on Mothering Sunday, when the champions
of each guild shot against one another at such a range that it
needed a keen eye to see the popinjay--a stuffed bird at which they
shot.

Stephen was one of these, his forest lore having always given him an
advantage over many of the others.  He even was one of the last
three who were to finish the sport by shooting against one another.
One was a butcher named Barlow.  The other was a Walloon, the best
shot among six hundred foreigners of various nations, all of whom,
though with little encouragement, joined in the national sport on
these pleasant spring afternoons.  The first contest threw out the
Walloon, at which there were cries of ecstasy; now the trial was
between Barlow and Stephen, and in this final effort, the distance
of the pole to which the popinjay was fastened was so much increased
that strength of arm told as much as accuracy of aim, and Stephen's
seventeen years' old muscles could not, after so long a strain, cope
with those of Ralph Barlow, a butcher of full thirty years old.  His
wrist and arm began to shake with weariness, and only one of his
three last arrows went straight to the mark, while Barlow was as
steady as ever, and never once failed.  Stephen was bitterly
disappointed, his eyes filled with tears, and he flung himself down
on the turf feeling as if the shouts of "A Barlow! a Barlow!" which
were led by the jovial voice of King Harry himself, were all
exulting over him.

Barlow was led up to the king, who hailed him "King of Shoreditch,"
a title borne by the champion archer ever after, so long as
bowmanship in earnest lasted.  A tankard which the king filled with
silver pieces was his prize, but Henry did not forget No. 2.
"Where's the other fellow?" he said.  "He was but a stripling, and
to my mind, his feat was a greater marvel than that of a stalwart
fellow like Barlow."

Half a dozen of the spectators, among them the cardinal's jester,
hurried in search of Stephen, who was roused from his fit of
weariness and disappointment by a shake of the shoulder as his uncle
jingled his bells in his ears, and exclaimed, "How now, here I own a
cousin!"  Stephen sat up and stared with angry, astonished eyes, but
only met a laugh.  "Ay, ay, 'tis but striplings and fools that have
tears to spend for such as this!  Up, boy!  Dye hear?  The other Hal
is asking for thee."

And Stephen, hastily brushing away his tears, and holding his flat
cap in his hand, was marshalled across the mead, hot, shy, and
indignant, as the jester mopped and mowed, and cut all sorts of
antics before him, turning round to observe in an encouraging voice,
"Pluck up a heart, man!  One would think Hal was going to cut oft
thine head!"  And then, on arriving where the king sat on his horse,
"Here he is, Hal, such as he is come humbly to crave thy gracious
pardon for hitting the mark no better!  He'll mend his ways, good my
lord, if your grace will pardon him this time."

"Ay, marry, and that will I," said the king.  "The springald bids
fair to be King of Shoreditch by the time the other fellow
abdicates.  How old art thou, my lad?"

"Seventeen, an it please your grace," said Stephen, in the gruff
voice of his age.

"And thy name?"

"Stephen Birkenholt, my liege," and he wondered whether he would be
recognised; but Henry only said -

"Methinks I've seen those sloe-black eyes before.  Or is it only
that the lad is thy very marrow, quipsome one?"

"The which," returned the jester, gravely, while Stephen tingled all
over with dismay, "may account for the tears the lad was wasting at
not having the thews of the fellow double his age!  But I envy him
not!  Not I!  He'll never have wit for mine office, but will come in
second there likewise."

"I dare be sworn he will," said the king.  "Here, take this, my good
lad, and prank thee in it when thou art out of thy time, and goest
a-hunting in Epping!"

It was a handsome belt with a broad silver clasp, engraven with the
Tudor rose and portcullis; and Stephen bowed low and made his
acknowledgments as best he might.

He was hailed with rapturous acclamations by his own contemporaries,
who held that he had saved the credit of the English prentice world,
and insisted on carrying him enthroned on their shoulders back to
Cheapside, in emulation of the journeymen and all the butcher kind,
who were thus bearing home the King of Shoreditch.

Shouts, halloos, whistles, every jubilant noise that youth and
boyhood could invent, were the triumphant music of Stephen on his
surging and uneasy throne, as he was shifted from one bearer to
another when each in turn grew tired of his weight.  Just, however,
as they were nearing their own neighbourhood, a counter cry broke
out, "Witchcraft!  His arrows are bewitched by the old Spanish
sorcerer!  Down with Dragons and Wizards!"  And a handful of mud
came full in the face of the enthroned lad, aimed no doubt by George
Bates.  There was a yell and rush of rage, but the enemy was in
numbers too small to attempt resistance, and dashed off before their
pursuers, only pausing at safe corners to shout Parthian darts of
"Wizards!"  "Magic!"  "Sorcerers!"  "Heretics!"

There was nothing to be done but to collect again, and escort
Stephen, who had wiped the mud off his face, to the Dragon court,
where Dennet danced on the steps for joy, and Master Headley, not a
little gratified, promised Stephen a supper for a dozen of his
particular friends at Armourers' Hall on the ensuing Easter Sunday.

Of course Stephen went in search of his brother, all the more
eagerly because he was conscious that they had of late drifted apart
a good deal.  Ambrose was more and more absorbed by the studies to
which Lucas Hansen led him, and took less and less interest in his
brother's pursuits.  He did indeed come to the Sunday's dinner
according to the regular custom, but the moment it was permissible
to leave the board he was away with Tibble Steelman to meet friends
of Lucas, and pursue studies, as if, Stephen thought, he had not
enough of books as it was.  When Dean Colet preached or catechised
in St. Paul's in the afternoon they both attended and listened, but
that good man was in failing health, and his wise discourses were
less frequent.

Where they were at other times, Stephen did not know, and hardly
cared, except that he had a general dislike to, and jealousy of,
anything that took his brother's sympathy away from him.  Moreover
Ambrose's face was thinner and paler, he had a strange absorbed
look, and often even when they were together seemed hardly to attend
to what his brother was saying.

"I will make him come," said Stephen to himself, as he went with
swinging gait towards Warwick Inner Yard, where, sure enough, he
found Ambrose sitting at the door, frowning over some black letter
which looked most uninviting in the eyes of the apprentice, and he
fell upon his brother with half angry, half merry reproofs for
wasting the fine spring afternoon over such studies.

Ambrose looked up with a dreamy smile and greeted his brother; but
all the time Stephen was narrating the history of the match (and he
DID tell the fate of each individual arrow of his own or Barlow's)
his eyes were wandering back to the crabbed page in his hand, and
when Stephen impatiently wound up his history with the invitation to
supper on Easter Sunday, the reply was, "Nay, brother, thanks, but
that I cannot do."

"Cannot!" exclaimed Stephen.

"Nay, there are other matters in hand that go deeper."

"Yea, I know whatever concerns musty books goes deeper with thee
than thy brother," replied Stephen, turning away much mortified.

Ambrose's warm nature was awakened.  He held his brother by the arm
and declared himself anything but indifferent to him, but he owned
that he did not love noise and revelry, above all on Sunday.

"Thou art addling thy brains with preachings!" said Stephen.  "Pray
Heaven they make not a heretic of thee.  But thou mightest for once
have come to mine own feast."

Ambrose, much perplexed and grieved at thus vexing his brother,
declared that he would have done so with all his heart, but that
this very Easter Sunday there was coming a friend of Master Hansen's
from Holland; who was to tell them much of the teaching in Germany,
which was so enlightening men's eyes.

"Yea, truly, making heretics of them, Mistress Headley saith,"
returned Stephen.  "O Ambrose, if thou wilt run after these books
and parchments, canst not do it in right fashion, among holy monks,
as of old?"

"Holy monks!" repeated Ambrose.  "Holy monks!  Where be they?"

Stephen stared at him.

"Hear uncle Hal talk of monks whom he sees at my Lord Cardinal's
table!  What holiness is there among them?  Men, that have vowed to
renounce all worldly and carnal things flaunt like peacocks and
revel like swine--my Lord Cardinal with his silver pillars foremost
of them!  He poor and mortified!  'Tis verily as our uncle saith, he
plays the least false and shameful part there!"

"Ambrose, Ambrose, thou wilt be distraught, poring over these
matters that were never meant for lads like us!  Do but come and
drive them out for once with mirth and good fellowship."

"I tell thee, Stephen, what thou callest mirth and good fellowship
do but drive the pain in deeper.  Sin and guilt be everywhere.  I
seem to see the devils putting foul words on the tongue and ill
deeds in the hands of myself and all around me, that they may accuse
us before God.  No, Stephen, I cannot, cannot come, I must go where
I can hear of a better way."

"Nay," said Stephen, "what better way can there be than to be
shriven--clean shriven--and then houselled, as I was ere Lent, and
trust to be again on next Low Sunday morn?  That's enough for a
plain lad."  He crossed himself reverently, "Mine own Lord pardoneth
and cometh to me."

But the two minds, one simple and practical, the other sensitive and
speculative, did not move in the same atmosphere, and could not
understand one another.  Ambrose was in the condition of excitement
and bewilderment produced by the first stirrings of the Reformation
upon enthusiastic minds.  He had studied the Vulgate, made out
something of the Greek Testament, read all fragments of the Fathers
that came in his way, and also all the controversial "tractates,"
Latin or Dutch, that he could meet with, and attended many a secret
conference between Lucas and his friends, when men, coming from
Holland or Germany, communicated accounts of the lectures and
sermons of Dr. Martin Luther, which already were becoming widely
known.

He was wretched under the continual tossings of his mind.  Was the
entire existing system a vast delusion, blinding the eyes and
destroying the souls of those who trusted to it; and was the only
safety in the one point of faith that Luther pressed on all, and
ought all that he had hitherto revered to crumble down to let that
alone be upheld?  Whatever he had once loved and honoured at times
seemed to him a lie, while at others real affection and veneration,
and dread of sacrilege, made him shudder at himself and his own
doubts!  It was his one thought, and he passionately sought after
all those secret conferences which did but feed the flame that
consumed him.

The elder men who were with him were not thus agitated.  Lucas's
convictions had not long been fixed.  He did not court observation
nor do anything unnecessarily to bring persecution on himself, but
he quietly and secretly acted as an agent in dispersing the Lollard
books and those of Erasmus, and lived in the conviction that there
would one day be a great crash, believing himself to be doing his
part by undermining the structure, and working on undoubtingly.
Abenali was not aggressive.  In fact, though he was reckoned among
Lucas's party, because of his abstinence from all cult of saints or
images, and the persecution he had suffered, he did not join in
their general opinions, and held aloof from their meetings.  And
Tibble Steelman, as has been before said, lived two lives, and that
as foreman at the Dragon court, being habitual to him, and requiring
much thought and exertion, the speculations of the reformers were to
him more like an intellectual relaxation than the business of life.
He took them as a modern artisan would in this day read his
newspaper, and attend his club meeting.

Ambrose, however, had the enthusiastic practicalness of youth.  On
that which he fully believed, he must act, and what did he fully
believe?

Boy as he was--scarcely yet eighteen--the toils and sports that
delighted his brother seemed to him like toys amusing infants on the
verge of an abyss, and he spent his leisure either in searching in
the Vulgate for something to give him absolute direction, or in
going in search of preachers, for, with the stirring of men's minds,
sermons were becoming more frequent.

There was much talk just now of the preaching of one Doctor Beale,
to whom all the tradesmen, journeymen, and apprentices were
resorting, even those who were of no special religious tendencies.
Ambrose went on Easter Tuesday to hear him preach at St. Mary's
Spitall.  The place was crowded with artificers, and Beale began by
telling them that he had "a pitiful bill," meaning a letter, brought
to him declaring how aliens and strangers were coming in to inhabit
the City and suburbs, to eat the bread from poor fatherless
children, and take the living from all artificers and the
intercourse from merchants, whereby poverty was so much increased
that each bewaileth the misery of others.  Presently coming to his
text, "Coelum coeli Domini, terram autem dedit filiis hominis" (the
Heaven of Heavens is the Lord's, the earth hath He given to the
children of men), the doctor inculcated that England was given to
Englishmen, and that as birds would defend their nests, so ought
Englishmen to defend themselves, AND TO HURT AND GRIEVE ALIENS FOR
THE COMMON WEAL!  The corollary a good deal resembled that of "hate
thine enemy" which was foisted by "them of the old time" upon "thou
shalt love thy neighbour."  And the doctor went on upon the text,
"Pugna pro patria," to demonstrate that fighting for one's country
meant rising upon and expelling all the strangers who dwelt and
traded within it.  Many of these foreigners were from the Hanse
towns which had special commercial privileges, there were also
numerous Venetians and Genoese, French and Spaniards, the last of
whom were, above all, the objects of dislike.  Their imports of
silks, cloth of gold, stamped leather, wine and oil, and their
superior skill in many handicrafts, had put English wares out of
fashion; and their exports of wool, tin, and lead excited equal
jealousy, which Dr. Beale, instigated as was well known by a broker
named John Lincoln, was thus stirring up into fierce passion.  His
sermon was talked of all over London; blacker looks than ever were
directed at the aliens, stones and dirt were thrown at them, and
even Ambrose, as he walked along the street, was reviled as the
Dutchkin's knave.  The insults became each day more daring and
outrageous.  George Bates and a skinner's apprentice named Studley
were caught in the act of tripping up a portly old Flanderkin and
forthwith sent to Newgate, and there were other arrests, which did
but inflame the smouldering rage of the mob.  Some of the wealthier
foreigners, taking warning by the signs of danger, left the City,
for there could be no doubt that the whole of London and the suburbs
were in a combustible condition of discontent, needing only a spark
to set it alight.

It was just about this time that a disreputable clerk--a lewd
priest, as Hall calls him--a hanger-on of the house of Howard, was
guilty of an insult to a citizen's wife as she was quietly walking
home through the Cheap.  Her husband and brother, who were nearer at
hand than he guessed, avenged the outrage with such good wills that
this disgrace to the priesthood was left dead on the ground.  When
such things happened, and discourses like Beale's were heard, it was
not surprising that Ambrose's faith in the clergy as guides received
severe shocks.



CHAPTER XVI.  MAY EVE



"The rich, the poor, the old, the young,
Beyond the seas though born and bred,
By prentices they suffered wrong,
When armed thus, they gather'd head."

Ill May Day.

May Eve had come, and little Dennet Headley was full of plans for
going out early with her young playfellows to the meadow to gather
May dew in the early morning, but her grandmother, who was in bed
under a heavy attack of rheumatism, did not like the reports brought
to her, and deferred her consent to the expedition.

In the afternoon there were tidings that the Lord Mayor, Sir Thomas
Rest had been sent for to my Lord Cardinal, who just at this time,
during the building at York House, was lodging in his house close to
Temple Bar.  Some hours later a message came to Master Alderman
Headley to meet the Lord Mayor and the rest of the Council at the
Guildhall.  He shook himself into his scarlet gown, and went off,
puffing and blowing, and bidding Giles and Stephen take heed that
they kept close, and ran into no mischief.

But they agreed, and Kit Smallbones with them, that there could be
no harm in going into the open space of Cheapside and playing out a
match with bucklers between Giles and Wat Ball, a draper's prentice
who had challenged him.  The bucklers were huge shields, and the
weapons were wooden swords.  It was an exciting sport, and brought
out all the youths of Cheapside in the summer evening, bawling out
encouragement, and laying wagers on either side.  The curfew rang,
but there were special privileges on May Eve, and the game went on
louder than ever.

There was far too much noise for any one to hear the town crier, who
went along jingling his bell, and shouting, "O yes!  O yes!  O yes!
By order of the Lord Mayor and Council, no householder shall allow
any one of his household to be abroad beyond his gate between the
hours of nine o'clock at night and seven in the morning," or if any
of the outermost heard it, as did Ambrose who was on his way home to
his night quarters, they were too much excited not to turn a deaf
ear to it.

Suddenly, however, just as Giles was preparing for a master-stroke,
he was seized roughly by the shoulder and bidden to give over.  He
looked round.  It was an alderman, not his master, but Sir John
Mundy, an unpopular, harsh man.

"Wherefore?" demanded Giles.

"Thou shalt know," said the alderman, seizing his arm to drag him to
the Counter prison, but Giles resisted.  Wat Ball struck at Sir
John's arm with his wooden sword, and as the alderman shouted for
the watch and city-guard, the lads on their side raised their cry,
"Prentices and Clubs!  Flat-caps and Clubs!"  Master Headley,
struggling along, met his colleague, with his gown torn into shreds
from his back, among a host of wildly yelling lads, and panting,
"Help, help, brother Headley!"  With great difficulty the two
aldermen reached the door of the Dragon, whence Smallbones sallied
out to rescue them, and dragged them in.

"The boys!--the boys!" was Master Headley's first cry, but he might
as well have tried to detach two particular waves from a surging
ocean as his own especial boys from the multitude on that wild
evening.  There was no moon, and the twilight still prevailed, but
it was dark enough to make the confusion greater, as the cries
swelled and numbers flowed into the open space of Cheapside.  In the
words of Hall, the chronicler, "Out came serving-men, and watermen,
and courtiers, and by XI of the chock there were VI or VII hundreds
in Cheap.  And out of Pawle's Churchyard came III hundred which wist
not of the others."  For the most part all was invoked in the semi-
darkness of the summer night, but here and there light came from an
upper window on some boyish face, perhaps full of mischief, perhaps
somewhat bewildered and appalled.  Here and there were torches,
which cast a red glare round them, but whose smoke blurred
everything, and seemed to render the darkness deeper.

Perhaps if the tumult had only been of the apprentices, provoked by
Alderman Mundy's interference, they would soon have dispersed, but
the throng was pervaded by men with much deeper design, and a cry
arose--no one knew from whence--that they would break into Newgate
and set free Studley and Bates.

By this time the torrent of young manhood was quite irresistible by
any force that had yet been opposed to it.  The Mayor and Sheriffs
stood at the Guildhall, and read the royal proclamation by the light
of a wax candle, held in the trembling hand of one of the clerks;
but no one heard or heeded them, and the uproar was increased as the
doors of Newgate fell, and all the felons rushed out to join the
rioters.

At the same time another shout rose, "Down with the aliens!" and
there was a general rush towards St. Martin's gate, in which
direction many lived.  There was, however, a pause here, for Sir
Thomas More, Recorder of London, stood in the way before St.
Martin's gate, and with his full sweet voice began calling out and
entreating the lads to go home, before any heads were broken more
than could be mended again.  He was always a favourite, and his good
humour seemed to be making some impression, when, either from the
determination of the more evil disposed, or because the inhabitants
of St. Martin's Lane were beginning to pour down hot water, stones,
and brickbats on the dense mass of heads below them, a fresh access
of fury seized upon the mob.  Yells of "Down with the strangers!"
echoed through the narrow streets, drowning Sir Thomas's voice.  A
lawyer who stood with him was knocked down and much hurt, the doors
were battered down, and the household stuff thrown from the windows.
Here, Ambrose, who had hitherto been pushed helplessly about, and
knocked hither and thither, was driven up against Giles, and, to
avoid falling and being trampled down, clutched hold of him
breathless and panting.

"Thou here!" exclaimed Giles.  "Who would have thought of sober
Ambrose in the midst of the fray?"  See here, Stevie!"

"Poor old Ambrose!" cried Stephen, "keep close to us!  We'll see no
harm comes to thee.  'Tis hot work, eh?"

"Oh, Stephen! could I but get out of the throng to warn my master
and Master Michael!"

Those words seemed to strike Giles Headley.  He might have cared
little for the fate of the old printer, but as he heard the screams
of the women in the houses around, he exclaimed, "Ay! there's the
old man and the little maid!  We will have her to the Dragon!"

"Or to mine aunt's," said Ambrose.

"Have with thee then," said Giles:  "Take his other arm, Steve;" and
locking their arms together the three fought and forced their way
from among the plunderers in St. Martin's with no worse mishap than
a shower of hot water, which did not hurt them much through their
stout woollen coats.  They came at last to a place where they could
breathe, and stood still a moment to recover from the struggle, and
vituperate the hot water.

Then they heard fresh howls and yells in front as well as behind.

"They are at it everywhere," exclaimed Stephen.  "I hear them
somewhere out by Cornhill."

"Ay, where the Frenchmen live that calender worsted," returned
Giles.  "Come on; who knows how it is with the old man and little
maid?"

"There's a sort in our court that are ready for aught," said
Ambrose.

On they hurried in the darkness, which was now at the very deepest
of the night; now and then a torch was borne across the street, and
most of the houses had lights in the upper windows, for few
Londoners slept on that strange night.  The stained glass of the
windows of the Churches beamed in bright colours from the Altar
lights seen through them, but the lads made slower progress than
they wished, for the streets were never easy to walk in the dark,
and twice they came on mobs assailing houses, from the windows of
one of which, French shoes and boots were being hailed down.  Things
were moderately quiet around St. Paul's, but as they came into
Warwick Lane they heard fresh shouts and wild cries, and at the
archway heading to the inner yard they could see that there was a
huge bonfire in the midst of the court--of what composed they could
not see for the howling figures that exulted round it.

"George Bates, the villain!" cried Stephen, as his enemy in exulting
ferocious delight was revealed for a moment throwing a book on the
fire, and shouting, "Hurrah! there's for the old sorcerer, there's
for the heretics!"

That instant Giles was flying on Bates, and Stephen, with equal, if
not greater fury, at one of his comrades; but Ambrose dashed through
the outskirts of the wildly screaming and shouting fellows, many of
whom were the miscreant population of the mews, to the black yawning
doorway of his master.  He saw only a fellow staggering out with the
screw of the press to feed the flame, and hurried on in the din to
call "Master, art thou there?"

There was no answer, and he moved on to the next door, calling again
softly, while all the spoilers seemed absorbed in the fire and the
combat.  "Master Michael!  'Tis I, Ambrose!"

"Here, my son," cautiously answered a voice he knew for Lucas
Hansen's.

"Oh, master! master!" was his low, heart-stricken cry, as by the
leaping light of a flame he saw the pale face of the old printer,
who drew him in.

"Yea! 'tis ruin, my son," said Lucas.  "And would that that were the
worst."

The light flashed and flickered through the broken window so that
Ambrose saw that the hangings had been torn down and everything
wrecked, and a low sound as of stifled weeping directed his eyes to
a corner where Aldonza sat with her father's head on her lap.
"Lives he?  Is he greatly hurt?" asked Ambrose, awe-stricken.

"The life is yet in him, but I fear me greatly it is passing fast,"
said Lucas, in a low voice.  "One of those lads smote him on the
back with a club, and struck him down at the poor maid's feet, nor
hath he moved since.  It was that one young Headley is fighting
with," he added.

"Bates! ah!  Would that we had come sooner!  What! more of this
work--"

For just then a tremendous outcry broke forth, and there was a rush
and panic among those who had been leaping round the fire just
before.  "The guard!--the King's men!" was the sound they presently
distinguished.  They could hear rough abusive voices, shrieks and
trampling of feet.  A few seconds more and all was still, only the
fire remained, and in the stillness the suppressed sobs and moans of
Aldonza were heard.

"A light!  Fetch a light from the fire!" said Lucas.

Ambrose ran out.  The flame was lessening, but he could see the dark
bindings, and the blackened pages of the books he loved so well.  A
corner of a page of St. Augustine's Confessions was turned towards
him and lay on a singed fragment of Aldonza's embroidered curtain,
while a little red flame was licking the spiral folds of the screw,
trying, as it were, to gather energy to do more than blacken it.
Ambrose could have wept over it at any other moment, but now he
could only catch up a brand--it was the leg of his master's carved
chair--and run back with it.  Lucas ventured to light a lamp, and
they could then see the old man's face pale, but calm and still,
with his long white beard flowing over his breast.  There was no
blood, no look of pain, only a set look about the eyes; and Aldonza
cried "Oh, father, thou art better!  Speak to me!  Let Master Lucas
lift thee up!"

"Nay, my child.  I cannot move hand or foot.  Let me be thus till
the Angel of Death come for me.  He is very near."  He spoke in
short sentences.  "Water--nay--no pain," he added then, and Ambrose
ran for some water in the first battered fragment of a tin pot he
could find.  They bathed his face and he gathered strength after a
time to say "A priest!--oh for a priest to shrive and housel me."

"I will find one," said Ambrose, speeding out into the court over
fragments of the beautiful work for which Abenali was hated, and
over the torn, half-burnt leaves of the beloved store of Lucas.  The
fire had died down, but morning twilight was beginning to dawn, and
all was perfectly still after the recent tumult, though for a moment
or two Ambrose heard some distant cries.

Where should he go?  Priests indeed were plentiful, but both his
friends were in bad odour with the ordinary ones.  Lucas had avoided
both the Lenten shrift and Easter Communion, and what Miguel might
have done, Ambrose was uncertain.  Some young priests had actually
been among the foremost in sacking the dwellings of the unfortunate
foreigners, and Ambrose was quite uncertain whether he might not
fall on one of that stamp--or on one who might vex the old man's
soul--perhaps deny him the Sacraments altogether.  As he saw the
pale lighted windows of St. Paul's, it struck him to see whether any
one were within.  The light might be only from some of the tapers
burning perpetually, but the pale light in the north-east, the
morning chill, and the clock striking three, reminded him that it
must be the hour of Prime, and he said to himself, "Sure, if a
priest be worshipping at this hour, he will be a good and merciful
man.  I can but try."

The door of the transept yielded to his hand.  He came forward,
lighted through the darkness by the gleam of the candles, which cast
a huge and awful shadow from the crucifix of the rood-screen upon
the pavement.  Before it knelt a black figure in prayer.  Ambrose
advanced in some awe and doubt how to break in on these devotions,
but the priest had heard his step, rose and said, "What is it, my
son?  Dost thou seek sanctuary after these sad doings?"

"Nay, reverend sir," said Ambrose.   "'Tis a priest for a dying man
I seek;" and in reply to the instant question, where it was, he
explained in haste who the sufferer was, and how he had received a
fatal blow, and was begging for the Sacraments.  "And oh, sir!" he
added, "he is a holy and God-fearing man, if ever one lived, and
hath been cruelly and foully entreated by jealous and wicked folk,
who hated him for his skill and industry."

"Alack for the unhappy lads; and alack for those who egged them on,"
said the priest.  "Truly they knew not what they did.  I will come
with thee, my good youth.  Thou hast not been one of them?"

"No, truly sir, save that I was carried along and could not break
from the throng.  I work for Lucas Hansen, the Dutch printer, whom
they have likewise plundered in their savage rage."

"'Tis well.  Thou canst then bear this," said the priest, taking a
thick wax candle.  Then reverently advancing to the Altar, whence he
took the pyx, or gold case in which the Host was reserved, he
lighted the candle, which he gave, together with his stole, to the
youth to bear before him.

Then, when the light fell full on his features, Ambrose with a
strange thrill of joy and trust perceived that it was no other than
Dean Colet, who had here been praying against the fury of the
people.  He was very thankful, feeling intuitively that there was no
fear but that Abenali would be understood, and for his own part, the
very contact with the man whom he revered seemed to calm and soothe
him, though on that solemn errand no word could be spoken.  Ambrose
went on slowly before, his dark head uncovered, the priestly stole
hanging over his arm, his hands holding aloft the tall candle of
virgin wax, while the Dean followed closely with feeble steps,
looking frail and worn, but with a grave, sweet solemnity on his
face.  It was a perfectly still morning, and as they slowly paced
along, the flame burnt steadily with little flickering, while the
pure, delicately-coloured sky overhead was becoming every moment
lighter, and only the larger stars were visible.  The houses were
absolutely still, and the only person they met, a lad creeping
homewards after the fray, fell on his knees bareheaded as he
perceived their errand.  Once or twice again sounds came up from the
city beneath, like shrieks or wailing breaking strangely on that
fair peaceful May morn; but still that pair went on till Ambrose had
guided the Dean to the yard, where, except that the daylight was
revealing more and more of the wreck around, all was as he had left
it.  Aldonza, poor child, with her black hair hanging loose like a
veil, for she had been startled from her bed, still sat on the
ground making her lap a pillow for the white-bearded head, nobler
and more venerable than ever.  On it lay, in the absolute immobility
produced by the paralysing blow, the fine features already in the
solemn grandeur of death, and only the movement of the lips under
the white flowing beard and of the dark eyes showing life.

Dean Colet said afterwards that he felt as if he had been called to
the death-bed of Israel, or of Barzillai the Gileadite, especially
when the old man, in the Oriental phraseology he had never entirely
lost, said, "I thank Thee, my God, and the God of my fathers, that
Thou hast granted me that which I had prayed for."

The Dutch printer was already slightly known to the Dean, having
sold him many books.  A few words were exchanged with him, but it
was plain that the dying man could not be moved, and that his
confession must he made on the lap of the young girl.  Colet knelt
over him so as to be able to hear, while Lucas and Ambrose withdraw,
but were soon called back for the remainder of the service for the
dying.  The old man's face showed perfect peace.  All worldly
thought and care seemed to have been crushed out of him by the blow,
and he did not even appear to think of the unprotected state of his
daughter, although he blessed her with solemn fervour immediately
after receiving the Viaticum--then lay murmuring to himself
sentences which Ambrose, who had learnt much from him, knew to be
from his Arabic breviary about palm-branches, and the twelve manner
of fruits of the Tree of Life.

It was a strange scene--the grand, calm, patriarchal old man, so
peaceful on his dark-haired daughter's lap in the midst of the
shattered home in the old feudal stable.  All were silent a while in
awe, but the Dean was the first to move and speak, calling Lucas
forward to ask sundry questions of him.

"Is there no good woman," he asked, "who could be with this poor
child and take her home, when her father shall have passed away?"

"Mine uncle's wife, sir," said Ambrose, a little doubtfully.  "I
trow she would come--since I can certify her that your reverence
holds him for a holy man."

"I had thy word for it," said the Dean.  "Ah! reply not, my son, I
see well how it may be with you here.  But tell those who will take
the word of John Colet that never did I mark the passing away of one
who had borne more for the true holy Catholic faith, nor held it
more to his soul's comfort."

For the Dean, a man of vivid intelligence, knew enough of the
Moresco persecutions to be able to gather from the words of Lucas
and Ambrose, and the confession of the old man himself, a far more
correct estimate of Abenali's sufferings, and constancy to the
truth, than any of the more homebred wits could have divined.  He
knew, too, that his own orthodoxy was so called in question by the
narrower and more unspiritual section of the clergy that only the
appreciative friendship of the King and the Cardinal kept him
securely in his position.

Ambrose sped away, knowing that Perronel would be quite satisfied.
He was sure of her ready compassion and good-will, but she had so
often bewailed his running after learning and possibly heretical
doctrine, that he had doubted whether she would readily respond to a
summons, on his own authority alone, to one looked on with so much
suspicion as Master Michael.  Colet intimated his intention of
remaining a little longer to pray with the dying man, and further
wrote a few words on his tablets, telling Ambrose to leave them with
one of the porters at his house as he went past St. Paul's.

It was broad daylight now, a lovely May morning, such as generally
called forth the maidens, small and great, to the meadows to rub
their fresh cheeks with the silvery dew, and to bring home kingcups,
cuckoo flowers, blue bottles, and cowslips for the Maypoles that
were to be decked.  But all was silent now, not a house was open,
the rising sun made the eastern windows of the churches a blaze of
light, and from the west door of St. Paul's the city beneath seemed
sleeping, only a wreath or two of smoke rising.  Ambrose found the
porter looking out for his master in much perturbation.  He groaned
as he looked at the tablets, and heard where the Dean was, and said
that came of being a saint on earth.  It would be the death of him
ere long!  What would old Mistress Colet, his mother, say?  He would
have detained the youth with his inquiries, but Ambrose said he had
to speed down to the Temple on an errand from the Dean, and hurried
away.  All Ludgate Hill was now quiet, every house closed, but here
and there lay torn shreds of garments, or household vessels.

As he reached Fleet Street, however, there was a sound of horses'
feet, and a body of men-at-arms with helmets glancing in the sun
were seen.  There was a cry, "There's one!  That's one of the lewd
younglings!  At him!"

And Ambrose to his horror and surprise saw two horsemen begin to
gallop towards him, as if to ride him down.  Happily he was close to
a narrow archway leading to an alley down which no war-horse could
possibly make its way, and dashing into it and round a corner, he
eluded his pursuers, and reached the bank of the river, whence,
being by this time experienced in the by-ways of London, he could
easily reach Perronel's house.

She was standing at her door looking out anxiously, and as she saw
him she threw up her hands in thanksgiving to our Lady that here he
was at last, and then turned to scold him.  "O lad, lad, what a
night thou hast given me!  I trusted at least that thou hadst wit to
keep out of a fray and to let the poor aliens alone, thou that art
always running after yonder old Spaniard.  Hey! what now?  Did they
fall on him!  Fie!  Shame on them!--a harmless old man like that."

"Yea, good aunt, and what is more, they have slain him, I fear me,
outright."

Amidst many a "good lack" and exclamation of pity and indignation
from Perronel, Ambrose told his tale of that strange night, and
entreated her to come with him to do what was possible for Abenali
and his daughter.  She hesitated a little; her kind heart was
touched, but she hardly liked to leave her house, in case her
husband should come in, as he generally contrived to do in the early
morning, now that the Cardinal's household was lodged so near her.
Sheltered as she was by the buildings of the Temple, she had heard
little or nothing of the noise of the riot, though she had been
alarmed at her nephew's absence, and an officious neighbour had run
in to tell her first that the prentice lads were up and sacking the
houses of the strangers, and next that the Tower was firing on them,
and the Lord Mayor's guard and the gentlemen of the Inns of Court
were up in arms to put them down.  She said several times, "Poor
soul!" and "Yea, it were a shame to leave her to the old Dutchkin,"
but with true Flemish deliberation she continued her household
arrangements, and insisted that the bowl of broth, which she set on
the table, should be partaken of by herself and Ambrose before she
would stir a step.  "Not eat!  Now out on thee, lad! what good dost
thou think thou or I can do if we come in faint and famished, where
there's neither bite nor sup to be had?  As for me, not a foot will
I budge, till I have seen thee empty that bowl.  So to it, my lad!
Thou hast been afoot all night, and lookst so grimed and ill-
favoured a varlet that no man would think thou camest from an honest
wife's house.  Wash thee at the pail!  Get thee into thy chamber and
put on clean garments, or I'll not walk the street with thee!  'Tis
not safe--thou wilt be put in ward for one of the rioters."

Everybody who entered that little house obeyed Mistress Randall, and
Ambrose submitted, knowing it vain to resist, and remembering the
pursuit he had recently escaped; yet the very refreshment of food
and cleanliness revealed to him how stiff and weary were his limbs,
though he was in no mood for rest.  His uncle appeared at the door
just as he had hoped Perronel was ready.

"Ah! there's one of you whole and safe!" he exclaimed.  "Where is
the other?"

"Stephen?" exclaimed Ambrose.  "I saw him last in Warwick Inner
Yard."  And in a few words he explained.  Hal Randall shook his
head.  "May all be well," he exclaimed, and then he told how Sir
Thomas Parr had come at midnight and roused the Cardinal's household
with tidings that all the rabble of London were up, plundering and
murdering all who came in their way, and that he had then ridden on
to Richmond to the King with the news.  The Cardinal had put his
house into a state of defence, not knowing against whom the riot
might be directed--and the jester had not been awakened till too
late to get out to send after his wife, besides which, by that time,
intelligence had come in that the attack was directed entirely on
the French and Spanish merchants and artificers in distant parts of
the city and suburbs, and was only conducted by lads with no better
weapons than sticks, so that the Temple and its precincts were in no
danger at all.

The mob had dispersed of its own accord by about three or four
o'clock, but by that hour the Mayor had got together a force, the
Gentlemen of the Inns of Court and the Yeomen of the Tower were up
in arms, and the Earl of Shrewsbury had come in with a troop of
horse.  They had met the rioters, and had driven them in herds like
sheep to the different prisons, after which Lord Shrewsbury had come
to report to the Cardinal that all was quiet, and the jester having
gathered as much intelligence as he could, had contrived to slip
into the garments that concealed his motley, and to reach home.  He
gave ready consent to Perronel's going to the aid of the sufferers
in Warwick Inner Yard, especially at the summons of the Dean of St.
Paul's, and even to her bringing home the little wench.  Indeed, he
would escort her thither himself for he was very anxious about
Stephen, and Ambrose was so dismayed by the account he gave as to
reproach himself extremely for having parted company with his
brother, and never having so much as thought of him as in peril,
while absorbed in care for Abenali.  So the three set out together,
when no doubt the sober, solid appearance which Randall's double
suit of apparel and black gown gave him, together with his wife's
matronly and respectable look, were no small protection to Ambrose,
for men-at-arms were prowling about the streets, looking hungry to
pick up straggling victims, and one actually stopped Randall to
interrogate him as to who the youth was, and what was his errand.

Before St. Paul's they parted, the husband and wife going towards
Warwick Inner Yard, whither Ambrose, fleeter of foot, would follow,
so soon as he had ascertained at the Dragon court whether Stephen
was at home.

Alas! at the gate he was hailed with the inquiry whether he had seen
his brother or Giles.  The whole yard was disorganised, no work
going on.  The lads had not been seen all night, and the master
himself had in the midst of his displeasure and anxiety been
summoned to the Guildhall.  The last that was known was Giles's
rescue, and the assault on Alderman Mundy.  Smallbones and Steelman
had both gone in different directions to search for the two
apprentices, and Dennet, who had flown down unheeded and unchecked
at the first hope of news, pulled Ambrose by the sleeve, and
exclaimed, "Oh! Ambrose, Ambrose! they can never hurt them!  They
can never do any harm to our lads, can they?"

Ambrose hoped for the same security, but in his dismay, could only
hurry after his uncle and aunt.

He found the former at the door of the old stable--whence issued
wild screams and cries.  Several priests and attendants were there
now, and the kind Dean with Lucas was trying to induce Aldonza to
relax the grasp with which she embraced the body, whence a few
moments before the brave and constant spirit had departed.  Her
black hair hanging over like a veil, she held the inanimate head to
her bosom, sobbing and shrieking with the violence of her Eastern
nature.  The priest who had been sent for to take care of the
corpse, and bear it to the mortuary of the Minster, wanted to move
her by force; but the Dean insisted on one more gentle experiment,
and beckoned to the kindly woman, whom he saw advancing with eyes
full of tears.  Perronel knelt down by her, persevered when the poor
girl stretched out her hand to beat her off, crying, "Off! go!
Leave me my father!  O father, father, joy of my life! my one only
hope and stay, leave me not!  Wake! wake, speak to thy child, O my
father!"

Though the child had never seen or heard of Eastern wailings over
the dead, yet hereditary nature prompted her to the lamentations
that scandalised the priests and even Lucas, who broke in with "Fie,
maid, thou mournest as one who hath no hope."  But Dr. Colet still
signed to them to have patience, and Perronel somehow contrived to
draw the girl's head on her breast and give her a motherly kiss,
such as the poor child had never felt since she, when almost a babe,
had been lifted from her dying mother's side in the dark stifling
hold of the vessel in the Bay of Biscay.  And in sheer surprise and
sense of being soothed she ceased her cries, listened to the tender
whispers and persuasions about holy men who would care for her
father, and his wishes that she should be a good maid--till at last
she yielded, let her hands be loosed, allowed Perronel to lift the
venerable head from her knee, and close the eyes--then to gather her
in her arms, and lead her to the door, taking her, under Ambrose's
guidance, into Lucas's abode, which was as utterly and mournfully
dismantled as their own, but where Perronel, accustomed in her
wandering days to all sorts of contrivances, managed to bind up the
streaming hair, and, by the help of her own cloak, to bring the poor
girl into a state in which she could be led through the streets.

The Dean meantime had bidden Lucas to take shelter at his own house,
and the old Dutchman had given a sort of doubtful acceptance.

Ambrose, meanwhile, half distracted about his brother, craved
counsel of the jester where to seek him.



CHAPTER XVII.  ILL MAY DAY



"With two and two together tied,
   Through Temple Bar and Strand they go,
To Westminster, there to be tried,
   With ropes about their necks also."

Ill May Day.

And where was Stephen?  Crouching, wretched with hunger, cold,
weariness, blows, and what was far worse, sense of humiliation and
disgrace, and terror for the future, in a corner of the yard of
Newgate--whither the whole set of lads, surprised in Warwick Inner
Court by the law students of the Inns of Court, had been driven like
so many cattle, at the sword's point, with no attention or
perception that he and Giles had been struggling AGAINST the
spoilers.

Yet this fact made them all the more forlorn.  The others, some
forty in number, their companions in misfortune, included most of
the Barbican prentices, who were of the Eagle faction, special
enemies alike to Abenali and to the Dragon, and these held aloof
from Headley and Birkenholt, nay, reviled them for the attack which
they declared had caused the general capture.

The two lads of the Dragon had, in no measured terms, denounced the
cruelty to the poor old inoffensive man, and were denounced in their
turn as friends of the sorcerer.  But all were too much exhausted by
the night's work to have spirit for more than a snarling encounter
of words, and the only effect was that Giles and Stephen were left
isolated in their misery outside the shelter of the handsome arched
gateway under which the others congregated.

Newgate had been rebuilt by Whittington out of pity to poor
prisoners and captives.  It must have been unspeakably dreadful
before, for the foulness of the narrow paved court, shut in by
strong walls, was something terrible.  Tired, spent, and aching all
over, and with boyish callousness to dirt, still Giles and Stephen
hesitated to sit down, and when at last they could stand no longer,
they rested, leaning against one another.  Stephen tried to keep up
hope by declaring that his master would soon get them released, and
Giles alternated between despair, and declarations that he would
have justice on those who so treated his father's son.  They dropped
asleep--first one and then the other--from sheer exhaustion, waking
from time to time to realise that it was no dream, and to feel all
the colder and more camped.

By and by there were voices at the gate.  Friends were there asking
after their own Will, or John, or Thomas, as the case might be.  The
jailer opened a little wicket-window in the heavy door, and, no
doubt for a consideration, passed in food to certain lads whom he
called out, but it did not always reach its destination.  It was
often torn away as by hungry wolves.  For though the felons had been
let out, when the doors were opened; the new prisoners were not by
any means all apprentices.  There were watermen, husbandmen,
beggars, thieves, among them, attracted by the scent of plunder; and
even some of the elder lads had no scruple in snatching the morsel
from the younger ones.

Poor little Jasper Hope, a mischievous little curly-headed idle
fellow, only thirteen, just apprenticed to his brother the draper,
and rushing about with the other youths in the pride of his flat
cap, was one of the sufferers.  A servant had been at the door,
promising that his brother would speedily have him released, and
handing in bread and meat, of which he was instantly robbed by
George Bates and three or four more big fellows, and sent away
reeling and sobbing, under a heavy blow, with all the mischief and
play knocked out of him.  Stephen and Giles called "Shame!" but were
unheeded, and they could only draw the little fellow up to them, and
assure him that his brother would soon come for him.

The next call at the gate was Headley and Birkenholt--"Master
Headley's prentices--Be they here?"

And at their answer, not only the window, but the door in the gate
was opened, and stooping low to enter, Kit Smallbones came in, and
not empty-handed.

"Ay, ay, youngsters," said he, "I knew how it would be, by what I
saw elsewhere, so I came with a fee to open locks.  How came ye to
get into such plight as this?  And poor little Hope too!  A fine
pass when they put babes in jail."

"I'm prenticed!" said Jasper, though in a very weak little voice.

"Have you had bite or sup?" asked Kit.

And on their reply, telling how those who had had supplies from home
had been treated, Smallbones observed, "Let them try it," and stood,
at all his breadth, guarding the two youths and little Jasper, as
they ate, Stephen at first with difficulty, in the faintness and
foulness of the place, but then ravenously.  Smallbones lectured
them on their folly all the time, and made them give an account of
the night.  He said their master was at the Guildhall taking counsel
with the Lord Mayor, and there were reports that it would go hard
with the rioters, for murder and plunder had been done in many
places, and he especially looked at Giles with pity, and asked how
he came to embroil himself with Master Mundy?  Still his good-
natured face cheered them, and he promised further supplies.  He
also relieved Stephen's mind about his brother, telling of his
inquiry at the Dragon in the morning.  All that day the condition of
such of the prisoners as had well-to-do friends was improving.
Fathers, brothers, masters, and servants, came in quest of them,
bringing food and bedding, and by exorbitant fees to the jailers
obtained for them shelter in the gloomy cells.  Mothers could not
come, for a proclamation had gone out that none were to babble, and
men were to keep their wives at home.  And though there were more
material comforts, prospects were very gloomy.  Ambrose came when
Kit Smallbones returned with what Mrs. Headley had sent the
captives.  He looked sad and dazed, and clung to his brother, but
said very little, except that they ought to be locked up together,
and he really would have been left in Newgate, if Kit had not laid a
great hand on his shoulder and almost forced him away.

Master Headley himself arrived with Master Hope in the afternoon.
Jasper sprang to his brother, crying, "Simon!  Simon! you are come
to take me out of this dismal, evil place?"  But Master Hope--a
tall, handsome, grave young man, who had often been much disturbed
by his little brother's pranks--could only shake his head with tears
in his eyes, and, sitting down on the roll of bedding, take him on
his knee and try to console him with the hope of liberty in a few
days.

He had tried to obtain the boy's release on the plea of his extreme
youth, but the authorities were hotly exasperated, and would hear of
no mercy.  The whole of the rioters were to be tried three days
hence, and there was no doubt that some would be made an example of,
the only question was, how many?

Master Headley closely interrogated his own two lads, and was
evidently sorely anxious about his namesake, who, he feared, might
be recognised by Alderman Mundy and brought forward as a ringleader
of the disturbance; nor did he feel at all secure that the plea that
he had no enmity to the foreigners, but had actually tried to defend
Lucas and Abenali, would be attended to for a moment, though Lucas
Hansen had promised to bear witness of it.  Giles looked perfectly
stunned at the time, unable to take in the idea, but at night
Stephen was wakened on the pallet that they shared with little
Jasper, by hearing him weeping and sobbing for his mother at
Salisbury.

Time lagged on till the 4th of May.  Some of the poor boys whiled
away their time with dreary games in the yard, sometimes wrestling,
but more often gambling with the dice, that one or two happened to
possess, for the dinners that were provided for the wealthier,
sometimes even betting on what the sentences would be, and who would
be hanged, or who escape.

Poor lads, they did not, for the most part, realise their real
danger, but Stephen was more and more beset with home-sick longing
for the glades and thickets of his native forest, and would keep
little Jasper and even Giles for an hour together telling of the
woodland adventures of those happy times, shutting his eyes to the
grim stone walls, and trying to think himself among the beeches,
hollies, cherries, and hawthorns, shining in the May sun!  Giles and
he were chose friends now, and with little Jasper, said their Paters
and Aves together, that they might be delivered from their trouble.
At last, on the 4th, the whole of the prisoners were summoned
roughly into the court, where harsh-hooking men-at-arms proceeded to
bind them together in pairs to be marched through the streets to the
Guildhall.  Giles and Stephen would naturally have been put
together, but poor little Jasper cried out so lamentably, when he
was about to be bound to a stranger, that Stephen stepped forward in
his stead, begging that the boy might go with Giles.  The soldier
made a contemptuous sound, but consented, and Stephen found that his
companion in misfortune, whose left elbow was tied to his right was
George Bates.

The two lads looked at each other in a strange, rueful manner, and
Stephen said, "Shake hands, comrade.  If we are to die, let us bear
no ill-will."

George gave a cold, limp, trembling hand.  He looked wretched,
subdued, tearful, and nearly starved, for he had no kinsfolk at
hand, and his master was too angry with him, and too much afraid of
compromising himself, to have sent him any supplies.  Stephen tried
to unbutton his own pouch, but not succeeding with his left hand,
bade George try with his right.  "There's a cake of bread there," he
said.  "Eat that, and thou'lt be able better to stand up like a man,
come what will."

George devoured it eagerly.  "Ah!" he said, in a stronger voice,
"Stephen Birkenholt, thou art an honest fellow.  I did thee wrong.
If ever we get out of this plight!"

Here they were ordered to march, and in a long and doleful
procession they set forth.  The streets were lined with men-at-arms,
for all the affections and sympathies of the people were with the
unfortunate boys, and a rescue was apprehended.

In point of fact, the Lord Mayor and aldermen were afraid of the
King's supposing them to have organised the assault on their rivals,
and each was therefore desirous to show severity to any one's
apprentices save his own; while the nobility were afraid of
contumacy on the part of the citizens, and were resolved to crush
down every rioter among them, so that they had filled the city with
their armed retainers.  Fathers and mothers, masters and dames,
sisters and fellow prentices, found their doors closely guarded, and
could only look with tearful, anxious eyes, at the processions of
poor youths, many of them mere children, who were driven from each
of the jails to the Guildhall.  There when all collected the entire
number amounted to two hundred and seventy-eight, though a certain
proportion of these were grown men, priests, wherrymen and beggars,
who had joined the rabble in search of plunder.

It did not look well for them that the Duke of Norfolk and his son,
the Earl of Surrey, were joined in the commission with the Lord
Mayor.  The upper end of the great hall was filled with aldermen in
their robes and chains, with the sheriffs of London and the whole
imposing array, and the Lord Mayor with the Duke sat enthroned above
them in truly awful dignity.  The Duke was a hard and pitiless man,
and bore the City a bitter grudge for the death of his retainer, the
priest killed in Cheapside, and in spite of all his poetical fame,
it may be feared that the Earl of Surrey was not of much more
merciful mood, while their men-at-arms spoke savagely of hanging,
slaughtering, or setting the City on fire.

The arraignment was very long, as there were so large a number of
names to be read, and, to the horror of all, it was not for a mere
riot, but for high treason.  The King, it was declared, being in
amity with all Christian princes, it was high treason to break the
truce and league by attacking their subjects resident in England.
The terrible punishment of the traitor would thus be the doom of all
concerned, and in the temper of the Howards and their retainers,
there was little hope of mercy, nor, in times like those, was there
even much prospect that, out of such large numbers, some might
escape.

A few were more especially cited, fourteen in number, among them
George Bates, Walter Ball, and Giles Headley, who had certainly
given cause for the beginning of the affray.  There was no attempt
to defend George Bates, who seemed to be stunned and bewildered
beyond the power of speaking or even of understanding, but as Giles
cast his eyes round in wild, terrified appeal, Master Headley rose
up in his alderman's gown, and prayed leave to be heard in his
defence, as he had witnesses to bring in his favour.

"Is he thy son, good Armourer Headley?" demanded the Duke of
Norfolk, who held the work of the Dragon court in high esteem.

"Nay, my Lord Duke, but he is in the place of one, my near kinsman
and godson, and so soon as his time be up, bound to wed my only
child!  I pray you to hear his cause, ere cutting off the heir of an
old and honourable house."

Norfolk and his sons murmured something about the Headley skill in
armour, and the Lord Mayor was willing enough for mercy, but Sir
John Mundy here rose:  "My Lord Duke, this is the very young man who
was first to lay hands on me!  Yea, my lords and sirs, ye have
already heard how their rude sport, contrary to proclamation, was
the cause of the tumult.  When I would have bidden them go home, the
one brawler asks me insolently, 'Wherefore?' the other smote me with
his sword, whereupon the whole rascaille set on me, and as Master
Alderman Headley can testify, I scarce reached his house alive.  I
ask should favour overcome justice, and a ringleader, who hath
assaulted the person of an alderman, find favour above others?"

"I ask not for favour," returned Headley, "only that witnesses be
heard on his behalf, ere he be condemned."

Headley, as a favourite with the Duke, prevailed to have permission
to call his witnesses; Christopher Smallbones, who had actually
rescued Alderman Mundy from the mob, and helped him into the Dragon
court, could testify that the proclamation had been entirely unheard
in the din of the youths looking on at the game.  And this was
followed up by Lucas Hansen declaring that so far from having
attacked or plundered him and the others in Warwick Inner Yard, the
two, Giles Headley and Stephen Birkenholt, had come to their
defence, and fallen on those who were burning their goods.

On this a discussion followed between the authorities seated at the
upper end of the hall.  The poor anxious watchers below could only
guess by the gestures what was being agitated as to their fate, and
Stephen was feeling it sorely hard that Giles should be pleaded for
as the master's kinsman, and he left to so cruel a fate, no one
saying a word for him but unheeded Lucas.  Finally, without giving
of judgment, the whole of the miserable prisoners, who had been
standing without food for hours, were marched back, still tied, to
their several prisons, while their guards pointed out the gibbets
where they were to suffer the next day.

Master Headley was not quite so regardless of his younger apprentice
as Stephen imagined.  There was a sort of little council held in his
hall when he returned--sad, dispirited, almost hopeless--to find Hal
Randall anxiously awaiting him.  The alderman said he durst not
plead for Stephen, lest he should lose both by asking too much, and
his young kinsman had the first right, besides being in the most
peril as having been singled out by name; whereas Stephen might
escape with the multitude if there were any mercy.  He added that
the Duke of Norfolk was certainly inclined to save one who knew the
secret of Spanish sword-blades; but that he was fiercely resolved to
be revenged for the murder of his lewd priest in Cheapside, and that
Sir John Mundy was equally determined that Giles should not escape.

"What am I to say to his mother?  Have I brought him from her for
this?" mourned Master Headley.  "Ay, and Master Randall, I grieve as
much for thy nephew, who to my mind hath done nought amiss.  A brave
lad!  A good lad, who hath saved mine own life.  Would that I could
do aught for him!  It is a shame!"

"Father," said Dennet, who had crept to the back of his chair, "the
King would save him!  Mind you the golden whistle that the grandame
keepeth?"

"The maid hath hit it!" exclaimed Randall.  "Master alderman!  Let
me but have the little wench and the whistle to-morrow morn, and it
is done.  How sayest thou, pretty mistress?  Wilt thou go with me
and ask thy cousin's life, and poor Stephen's, of the King?"

"With all my heart, sir," said Dennet, coming to him with
outstretched hands.  "Oh! sir, canst thou save them?  I have been
vowing all I could think of to our Lady and the saints, and now they
are going to grant it!"

"Tarry a little," said the alderman.  "I must know more of this.
Where wouldst thou take my child?  How obtain access to the King's
Grace?"

"Worshipful sir, trust me," said Randall.  "Thou know'st I am sworn
servant to my Lord Cardinal, and that his folk are as free of the
Court as the King's own servants.  If thine own folk will take us up
the river to Richmond, and there wait for us while I lead the maid
to the King, I can well-nigh swear to thee that she will prevail."

The alderman looked greatly distressed.  Ambrose threw himself on
his knees before him, and in an agony entreated him to consent,
assuring him that Master Randall could do what he promised.  The
alderman was much perplexed.  He knew that his mother, who was
confined to her bed by rheumatism, would be shocked at the idea.  He
longed to accompany his daughter himself, but for him to be absent
from the sitting of the court might be fatal to Giles, and he could
not bear to lose any chance for the poor youths.

Meantime an interrogative glance and a nod had passed between Tibble
and Randall, and when the alderman looked towards the former, always
his prime minister, the answer was, "Sir, meseemeth that it were
well to do as Master Randall counselleth.  I will go with Mistress
Dennet, if such be your will.  The lives of two such youths as our
prentices may not lightly be thrown away, while by God's providence
there is any means of striving to save them."

Consent then was given, and it was further arranged that Dennet and
her escort should be ready at the early hour of half-past four, so
as to elude the guards who were placed in the streets; and also
because King Henry in the summer went very early to mass, and then
to some out-of-door sport.  Randall said he would have taken his own
good woman to have the care of the little mistress, but that the
poor little orphan Spanish wench had wept herself so sick, that she
could not be left to a stranger.

Master Headley himself brought the child by back streets to the
river, and thence down to the Temple stairs, accompanied by Tibble
Steelman, and a maid-servant on whose presence her grandmother had
insisted.  Dennet had hardly slept all night for excitement and
perturbation, and she looked very white, small, and insignificant
for her thirteen years, when Randall and Ambrose met her, and placed
her carefully in the barge which was to take them to Richmond.  It
was somewhat fresh in the very early morning, and no one was
surprised that Master Randall wore a large dark cloak as they rowed
up the river.  There was very little speech between the passengers;
Dennet sat between Ambrose and Tibble.  They kept their heads bowed.
Ambrose's brow was on one hand, his elbow on his knee, but he spared
the other to hold Dennet.  He had been longing for the old assurance
he would once have had, that to vow himself to a life of hard
service in a convent would be the way to win his brother's life; but
he had ceased to be able to feel that such bargains were the right
course, or that a convent necessarily afforded sure way of service,
and he never felt mere insecure of the way and means to prayer than
in this hour of anguished supplication.

When they came beyond the City, within sight of the trees of Sheen,
as Richmond was still often called, Randall insisted that Dennet
should eat some of the bread and meat that Tibble had brought in a
wallet for her.  "She must look her best," he said aside to the
foreman.  "I would that she were either more of a babe or better
favoured!  Our Hal hath a tender heart for a babe and an eye for a
buxom lass."

He bade the maid trim up the child's cap and make the best of her
array, and presently reached some stairs leading up to the park.
There he let Ambrose lift her out of the boat.  The maid would fain
have followed, but he prevented this, and when she spoke of her
mistress having bidden her follow wherever the child went, Tibble
interfered, telling her that his master's orders were that Master
Randall should do with her as he thought meet.  Tibble himself
followed until they reached a thicket entirely concealing them from
the river.  Halting here, Randall, with his nephew's help, divested
himself of his long gown and cloak, his beard and wig, produced
cockscomb and bauble from his pouch, and stood before the astonished
eyes of Dennet as the jester!

She recoiled upon Tibble with a little cry, "Oh, why should he make
sport of us?  Why disguise himself?"

"Listen, pretty mistress," said Randall.  "'Tis no disguise, Tibble
there can tell you, or my nephew.  My disguise lies there," pointing
to his sober raiment.  "Thus only can I bring thee to the King's
presence!  Didst think it was jest?  Nay, verily, I am as bound to
try to save my sweet Stevie's life, my sister's own gallant son, as
thou canst be to plead for thy betrothed."  Dennet winced.

"Ay, Mistress Dennet," said Tibble, "thou mayst trust him, spite of
his garb, and 'tis the sole hope.  He could only thus bring thee in.
Go thou on, and the lad and I will fall to our prayers."

Dennet's bosom heaved, but she looked up in the jesters dark eyes,
saw the tears in them, made an effort, put her hand in his, and
said, "I will go with him."

Hal led her away, and they saw Tibble and Ambrose both fall on their
knees behind the hawthorn bush, to speed them with their prayers,
while all the joyous birds singing their carols around seemed to
protest against the cruel captivity and dreadful doom of the young
gladsome spirits pent up in the City prisons.

One full gush of a thrush's song in especial made Dennet's eyes
overflow, which the jester perceived and said, "Nay, sweet maid, no
tears.  Kings brook not to be approached with blubbered faces.  I
marvel not that it seems hard to thee to go along with such as I,
but let me be what I will outside, mine heart is heavy enough, and
thou wilt learn sooner or later, that fools are not the only folk
who needs must smile when they have a load within."

And then, as much to distract her thoughts and prevent tears as to
reassure her, he told her what he had before told his nephews of the
inducements that had made him Wolsey's jester, and impressed on her
the forms of address.

"Thou'lt hear me make free with him, but that's part of mine office,
like the kitten I've seen tickling the mane of the lion in the
Tower.  Thou must say, 'An it please your Grace,' and thou needst
not speak of his rolling in the mire, thou wottest, or it may anger
him."

The girl showed that her confidence became warmer by keeping nearer
to his side, and presently she said, "I must beg for Stephen first,
for 'tis his whistle."

"Blessings on thee, fair wench, for that, yet seest thou, 'tis the
other springald who is in the greater peril, and he is closer to thy
father and to thee."

"He fled, when Stephen made in to the rescue of my father," said
Dennet.

"The saints grant we may so work with the King that he may spare
them both," ejaculated Randall.

By this time the strange pair were reaching the precincts of the
great dwelling-house, where about the wide-open door loitered
gentlemen, grooms, lacqueys, and attendants of all kinds.  Randall
reconnoitred.

"An we go up among all these," he said, "they might make their sport
of us both, so that we might have time.  Let us see whether the
little garden postern be open."

Henry VIII. had no fears of his people, and kept his dwellings more
accessible than were the castles of many a subject.  The door in the
wall proved to be open, and with an exclamation of joy, Randall
pointed out two figures, one in a white silken doublet and hose,
with a short crimson cloak over his shoulder, the other in scarlet
and purple robes, pacing the walk under the wall--Henry's way of
holding a cabinet council with his prime minister on a summer's
morning.

"Come on, mistress, put a brave face on it!" the jester encouraged
the girl, as he led her forward, while the king, catching sight of
them, exclaimed, "Ha! there's old Patch.  What doth he there?"

But the Cardinal, impatient of interruption, spoke imperiously,
"What dost thou here, Merriman?  Away, this is no time for thy
fooleries and frolics."

But the King, with some pleasure in teasing, and some of the
enjoyment of a schoolboy at a break in his tasks, called out, "Nay,
come hither, quipsome one!  What new puppet hast brought hither to
play off on us?"

"Yea, brother Hal," said the jester, "I have brought one to let thee
know how Tom of Norfolk and his crew are playing the fool in the
Guildhall, and to ask who will be the fool to let them wreak their
spite on the best blood in London, and leave a sore that will take
many a day to heal."

"How is this, my Lord Cardinal?" said Henry; "I bade them make an
example of a few worthless hinds, such as might teach the lusty
burghers to hold their lads in bounds and prove to our neighbours
that their churlishness was by no consent of ours."

"I trow," returned the Cardinal, "that one of these same hinds is a
boon companion of the fool's--hinc illae lachrymae, and a speech
that would have befitted a wise man's mouth."

"There is work that may well make even a fool grave, friend Thomas,"
replied the jester.

"Nay, but what hath this little wench to say?" asked the King,
looking down on the child from under his plumed cap with a face set
in golden hair, the fairest and sweetest, as it seemed to her, that
she had ever seen, as he smiled upon her.  "Methinks she is too
small to be thy love.  Speak out, little one.  I love little maids,
I have one of mine own.  Hast thou a brother among these misguided
lads?"

"Not so, an please your Grace," said Dennet, who fortunately was not
in the least shy, and was still too young for a maiden's
shamefastness.  "He is to be my betrothed.  I would say, one of them
is, but the other--he saved my father's life once."

The latter words were lost in the laughter of the King and Cardinal
at the unblushing avowal of the small, prim-faced maiden.

"Oh ho!  So 'tis a case of true love, whereto a King's face must
needs show grace.  Who art thou, fair suppliant, and who may this
swain of thine be?"

"I am Dennet Headley, so please your Grace; my father is Giles
Headley the armourer, Alderman of Cheap Ward," said Dennet, doing
her part bravely, though puzzled by the King's tone of banter; "and
see here, your Grace!"

"Ha! the hawk's whistle that Archduke Philip gave me!  What of that?
I gave it--ay, I gave it to a youth that came to mine aid, and
reclaimed a falcon for me!  Is't he, child?"

"Oh, sir, 'tis he who came in second at the butts, next to Barlow,
'tis Stephen Birkenholt!  And he did nought!  They bore no ill-will
to strangers!  No, they were falling on the wicked fellows who had
robbed and slain good old Master Michael, who taught our folk to
make the only real true Damascus blades welded in England.  But the
lawyers of the Inns of Court fell on them all alike, and have driven
them off to Newgate, and poor little Jasper Hope too.  And Alderman
Mundy bears ill-will to Giles.  And the cruel Duke of Norfolk and
his men swear they'll have vengeance on the Cheap, and there'll be
hanging and quartering this very morn.  Oh! your Grace, your Grace,
save our lads! for Stephen saved my father."

"Thy tongue wags fast, little one," said the King, good-naturedly,
"with thy Stephen and thy Giles.  Is this same Stephen, the knight
of the whistle and the bow, thy betrothed, and Giles thy brother?"

"Nay, your Grace," said Dennet, hanging her head, "Giles Headley is
my betrothed--that is, when his time is served, he will be--father
sets great store by him, for he is the only one of our name to keep
up the armoury, and he has a mother, Sir, a mother at Salisbury.
But oh, Sir, Sir!  Stephen is so good and brave a had!  He made in
to save father from the robbers, and he draws the best bow in
Cheapside, and he can grave steel as well as Tibble himself, and
this is the whistle your Grace wots of."

Henry listened with an amused smile that grew broader as Dennet's
voice all unconsciously became infinitely more animated and earnest,
when she began to plead Stephen's cause.

"Well, well, sweetheart," he said, "I trow thou must have the twain
of them, though," he added to the Cardinal, who smiled broadly, "it
might perchance be more for the maid's peace than she wots of now,
were we to leave this same knight of the whistle to be strung up at
once, ere she have found her heart; but in sooth that I cannot do,
owing well nigh a life to him and his brother.  Moreover, we may not
have old Headley's skill in weapons lost!"

Dennet held her hands close clasped while these words were spoken
apart.  She felt as if her hope, half granted, were being snatched
from her, as another actor appeared on the scene, a gentleman in a
lawyer's gown, and square cap, which he doffed as he advanced and
put his knee to the ground before the King, who greeted him with
"Save you, good Sir Thomas, a fair morning to you."

"They told me your Grace was in Council with my Lord Cardinal," said
Sir Thomas More; "but seeing that there was likewise this merry
company, I durst venture to thrust in, since my business is urgent."

Dennet here forgot court manners enough to cry out, "O your Grace!
your Grace, be pleased for pity's sake to let me have the pardon for
them first, or they'll be hanged and dead.  I saw the gallows in
Cheapside, and when they are dead, what good will your Grace's mercy
do them?"

"I see," said Sir Thomas.  "This little maid's errand jumps with
mine own, which was to tell your Grace that unless there be speedy
commands to the Howards to hold their hands, there will be wailing
like that of Egypt in the City.  The poor boys, who were but
shouting and brawling after the nature of mettled youth--the most
with nought of malice--are penned up like sheep for the slaughter--
ay, and worse than sheep, for we quarter not our mutton alive,
whereas these poor younglings--babes of thirteen, some of them--be
indicted for high treason!  Will the parents, shut in from coming to
them by my Lord of Norfolk's men, ever forget their agonies, I ask
your Grace?"

Henry's face grew red with passion.  "If Norfolk thinks to act the
King, and turn the city into a shambles,"--with a mighty oath--"he
shall abye it.  Here, Lord Cardinal--more, let the free pardon be
drawn up for the two lads.  And we will ourselves write to the Lord
Mayor and to Norfolk that though they may work their will on the
movers of the riot--that pestilent Lincoln and his sort--not a
prentice lad shall be touched till our pleasure be known.  There
now, child, thou hast won the lives of thy lads, as thou callest
them.  Wilt thou rue the day, I marvel?  Why cannot some of their
mothers pluck up spirit and beg them off as thou hast done?"

"Yea," said Wolsey.  "That were the right course.  If the Queen were
moved to pray your Grace to pity the striplings then could the
Spaniards make no plaint of too much clemency being shown."

They were all this time getting nearer the palace, and being now at
a door opening into the hall, Henry turned round.  "There, pretty
maid, spread the tidings among thy gossips, that they have a tender-
hearted Queen, and a gracious King.  The Lord Cardinal will
presently give thee the pardon for both thy lads, and by and by thou
wilt know whether thou thankest me for it!"  Then putting his hand
under her chin, he turned up her face to him, kissed her on each
cheek, and touched his feathered cap to the others, saying, "See
that my bidding be done," and disappeared.

"It must be prompt, if it be to save any marked for death this
morn," More in a how voice observed to the Cardinal.  "Lord Edmund
Howard is keen as a blood-hound on his vengeance."

Wolsey was far from being a cruel man, and besides, there was a
natural antagonism between him and the old nobility, and he liked
and valued his fool, to whom he turned, saying, "And what stake hast
thou in this, sirrah?  Is't all pure charity?"

"I'm scarce such a fool as that, Cousin Red Hat," replied Randall,
rallying his powers.  "I leave that to Mr. More here, whom we all
know to be a good fool spoilt.  But I'll make a clean breast of it.
This same Stephen is my sister's son, an orphan lad of good birth
and breeding--whom, my lord, I would die to save."

"Thou shalt have the pardon instantly, Merriman," said the Cardinal,
and beckoning to one of the attendants who clustered round the door,
he gave orders that a clerk should instantly, and very briefly, make
out the form.  Sir Thomas More, hearing the name of Headley, added
that for him indeed the need of haste was great, since he was one of
the fourteen sentenced to die that morning.

Quipsome Hal was interrogated as to how he had come, and the
Cardinal and Sir Thomas agreed that the river would be as speedy a
way of returning as by land; but they decided that a King's
pursuivant should accompany him, otherwise there would be no chance
of forcing his way in time through the streets, guarded by the
Howard retainers.

As rapidly as was in the nature of a high officer's clerk to produce
a dozen lines, the precious document was indicted, and it was
carried at last to Dennet, bearing Henry's signature and seal.  She
held it to her bosom, while, accompanied by the pursuivant, who--
happily for them--was interested in one of the unfortunate fourteen,
and therefore did not wait to stand on his dignity, they hurried
across to the place where they had left the barge--Tibble and
Ambrose joining them on the way.  Stephen was safe.  Of his life
there could be no doubt, and Ambrose almost repented of feeling his
heart so light while Giles's fate hung upon their speed.

The oars were plied with hearty good-will, but the barge was
somewhat heavy, and by and by coming to a landing-place where two
watermen had a much smaller and lighter boat, the pursuivant advised
that he should go forward with the more necessary persons, leaving
the others to follow.  After a few words, the light weights of
Tibble and Dennet prevailed in their favour, and they shot forward
in the little boat.

They passed the Temple--on to the stairs nearest Cheapside--up the
street.  There was an awful stillness, only broken by heavy knells
sounding at intervals from the churches.  The back streets were
thronged by a trembling, weeping people, who all eagerly made way
for the pursuivant, as he called "Make way, good people--a pardon!"

They saw the broader space of Cheapside.  Horsemen in armour guarded
it, but they too opened a passage for the pursuivant.  There was to
be seen above the people's heads a scaffold.  A fire burnt on it--
the gallows and noosed rope hung above.

A figure was mounting the ladder.  A boy!  Oh, Heavens! would it be
too late?  Who was it?  They were still too far off to see.  They
might only be cruelly holding out hope to one of the doomed.

The pursuivant shouted aloud--"In the King's name, Hold!"  He lifted
Dennet on his shoulder, and bade her wave her parchment.  An
overpowering roar arose.  "A pardon! a pardon!  God save the King!"

Every hand seemed to be forwarding the pursuivant and the child, and
it was Giles Headley, who, loosed from the hold of the executioner,
stared wildly about him, like one distraught.



CHAPTER XVIII.  PARDON



"What if;' quoth she, 'by Spanish blood
Have London's stately streets been wet,
Yet will I seek this country's good
And pardon for these young men get.'"

CHURCHILL.

The night and morning had been terrible to the poor boys, who only
had begun to understand what awaited them.  The fourteen selected
had little hope, and indeed a priest came in early morning to hear
the confessions of Giles Headley and George Bates, the only two who
were in Newgate.

George Bates was of the stolid, heavy disposition that seems armed
by outward indifference, or mayhap pride.  He knew that his case was
hopeless, and he would not thaw even to the priest.  But Giles had
been quite unmanned, and when he found that for the doleful
procession to the Guildhall he was to be coupled with George Bates,
instead of either of his room-fellows, he flung himself on Stephen's
neck, sobbing out messages for his mother, and entreaties that, if
Stephen survived, he would be good to Aldonza.  "For you will wed
Dennet, and--"

There the jailers roughly ordered him to hold his peace, and dragged
him off to be pinioned to his fellow-sufferer.  Stephen was not
called till some minutes later, and had not seen him since.  He
himself was of course overshadowed by the awful gloom of
apprehension for himself, and pity for his comrades, and he was
grieved at not having seen or heard of his brother or master, but he
had a very present care in Jasper, who was sickening in the prison
atmosphere, and when fastened to his arm, seemed hardly able to
walk.  Leashed as they were, Stephen could only help him by holding
the free hand, and when they came to the hall, supporting him as
much as possible, as they stood in the miserable throng during the
conclusion of the formalities, which ended by the horrible sentence
of the traitor being pronounced on the whole two hundred and
seventy-eight.  Poor little Jasper woke for an interval from the
sense of present discomfort to hear it, he seemed to stiffen all
over with the shock of horror, and then hung a dead weight on
Stephen's arm.  It would have dragged him down, but there was no
room to fall, and the wretchedness of the lad against whom he
staggered found vent in a surly imprecation, which was lost among
the cries and the entreaties of some of the others.  The London
magistracy were some of them in tears, but the indictment for high
treason removed the poor lads from their jurisdiction to that of the
Earl Marshal, and thus they could do nothing to save the fourteen
foremost victims.  The others were again driven out of the hall to
return to their prisons; the nearest pair of lads doing their best
to help Stephen drag his burthen along.  In the halt outside, to
arrange the sad processions, one of the guards, of milder mood, cut
the cord that bound the lifeless weight to Stephen, and permitted
the child to be laid on the stones of the court, his collar
unbuttoned, and water to be brought.  Jasper was just reviving when
the word came to march, but still he could not stand, and Stephen
was therefore permitted the free use of his arms, in order to carry
the poor little fellow.  Thirteen years made a considerable load for
seventeen, though Stephen's arms were exercised in the smithy, and
it was a sore pull from the Guildhall.  Jasper presently recovered
enough to walk with a good deal of support.  When he was laid on the
bed he fell unto an exhausted sleep, while Stephen kneeling, as the
strokes of the knell smote on his ear, prayed--as he had never
prayed before--for his comrade, for his enemy, and for all the
unhappy boys who were being led to their death wherever the outrages
had been committed.

Once indeed there was a strange sound coming across that of the
knell.  It almost sounded like an acclamation of joy.  Could people
be so cruel, thought Stephen, as to mock poor Giles's agonies?
There were the knells still sounding.  How long he did not know, for
a beneficent drowsiness stole over him as he knelt, and he was only
awakened, at the same time as Jasper, by the opening of his door.

He looked up to see three figures--his brother, his uncle, his
master.  Were they come to take leave of him?  But the one
conviction that their faces beamed with joy was all that he could
gather, for little Jasper sprang up with a scream of terror,
"Stephen, Stephen, save me!  They will cut out my heart," and clung
trembling to his breast, with arms round his neck.

"Poor child! poor child!" sighed Master Headley.  "Would that I
brought him the same tidings as to thee!"

"Is it so?" asked Stephen, reading confirmation as he looked from
the one to the other.  Though he was unable to rise under the weight
of the boy, life and light were coming to his eye, while Ambrose
clasped his hand tightly, chocked by the swelling of his heart in
almost an agony of joy and thankfulness.

"Yea, my good lad," said the alderman.  "Thy good kinsman took my
little wench to bear to the King the token he gave thee."

"And Giles?" Stephen asked, "and the rest?"

"Giles is safe.  For the rest--may God have mercy on their souls."

These words passed while Stephen rocked Jasper backwards and
forwards, his face hidden on his neck.

"Come home," added Master Headley.  "My little Dennet and Giles
cannot yet rejoice till thou art with them.  Giles would have come
himself, but he is sorely shaken, and could scarce stand."

Jasper caught the words, and loosing his friend's neck, looked up.
"Oh! are we going home?  Come, Stephen.  Where's brother Simon?  I
want my good sister!  I want nurse!  Oh! take me home!"  For as he
tried to sit up, he fell back sick and dizzy on the bed.

"Alack! alack!" mourned Master Headley; and the jester, muttering
that it was not the little wench's fault, turned to the window, and
burst into tears.  Stephen understood it all, and though he felt a
passionate longing for freedom, he considered in one moment whether
there were any one of his fellow prisoners to whom Jasper could be
left, or who would be of the least comfort to him, but could find no
one, and resolved to cling to him as once to old Spring.

"Sir," he said, as he rose to his master, "I fear me he is very
sick.  Will they--will your worship give me licence to bide with him
till this ends?"

"Thou art a good-hearted lad," said the alderman with a hand on his
shoulder.  "There is no further danger of life to the prentice lads.
The King hath sent to forbid all further dealing with them, and hath
bidden my little maid to set it about that if their mothers beg them
grace from good Queen Katherine, they shall have it.  But this poor
child!  He can scarce be left.  His brother will take it well of
thee if thou wilt stay with him till some tendance can be had.  We
can see to that.  Thanks be to St. George and our good King, this
good City is our own again!"

The alderman turned away, and Ambrose and Stephen exchanged a
passionate embrace, feeling what it was to be still left to one
another.  The jester too shook his nephew's hand, saying, "Boy, boy,
the blessing of such as I is scarce worth the having, but I would
thy mother could see thee this day."

Stephen was left with these words and his brother's look to bear him
through a trying time.

For the "Captain of Newgate" was an autocrat, who looked on his
captives as compulsory lodgers, out of whom he was entitled to wring
as much as possible--as indeed he had no other salary, nor means of
maintaining his underlings, a state of things which lasted for two
hundred years longer, until the days of James Oglethorpe and John
Howard.  Even in the rare cases of acquittals, the prisoner could
not be released till he had paid his fees, and that Giles Headley
should have been borne off from the scaffold itself in debt to him
was an invasion of his privileges, which did not dispose him to be
favourable to any one connected with that affair; and he liked to
show his power and dignity even to an alderman.

He was found sitting in a comfortable tapestried chamber, handsomely
dressed in orange and brown, and with a smooth sleek countenance and
the appearance of a good-natured substantial citizen.

He only half rose from his big carved chair, and touched without
removing his cap, to greet the alderman, as he observed, without the
accustomed prefix of your worship--"So, you are come about your
prentice's fees and dues.  By St. Peter of the Fetters, 'tis an
irksome matter to have such a troop of idle, mischievous, dainty
striplings thrust on one, giving more trouble, and making more call
and outcry than twice as many honest thieves and pickpurses."

"Be assured, sir, they will scarce trouble you longer than they can
help," said Master Headley.

"Yea, the Duke and my Lord Edmund are making brief work of them,"
quoth the jailer.  "Ha!" with an oath, "what's that?  Nought will
daunt those lads till the hangman is at their throats."

For it was a real hurrah that reached his ears.  The jester had got
all the boys round him in the court, and was bidding them keep up a
good heart, for their lives were safe, and their mothers would beg
them off.  Their shouts did not tend to increase the captain's good
humour, and though he certainly would not have let out Alderman
Headley's remaining apprentice without his fee, he made as great a
favour of permission, and charged as exorbitantly, for a pardoned
man to remain within his domains as if they had been the most costly
and delightful hostel in the kingdom.

Master Hope, who presently arrived, had to pay a high fee for leave
to bring Master Todd, the barber-surgeon, with him to see his
brother; but though he offered a mark a day (a huge amount at that
time) the captain was obdurate in refusing to allow the patient to
be attended by his own old nurse, declaring that it was contrary to
discipline, and (what probably affected him much more) one such
woman could cause more trouble than a dozen felons.  No doubt it was
true, for she would have insisted on moderate cleanliness and
comfort.  No other attendant whom Mr. Hope could find would endure
the disgrace, the discomfort, and alarm of a residence in Newgate
for Jasper's sake; so that the drapers gratitude to Stephen
Birkenholt, for voluntarily sharing the little fellow's captivity,
was great, and he gave payment to one or two of the officials to
secure the two lads being civilly treated, and that the provisions
sent in reached them duly.

Jasper did not in general seem very ill by day, only heavy, listless
and dull, unable to eat, too giddy to sit up, and unable to help
crying like a babe, if Stephen left him for a moment; but he never
fell asleep without all the horror and dread of the sentence coming
over him.  Like all the boys in London, he had gazed at executions
with the sort of curiosity that leads rustic lads to run to see pigs
killed, and now the details came over him in semi-delirium, as acted
out on himself, and he shrieked and struggled in an anguish which
was only mitigated by Stephen's reassurances, caresses, even
scoldings.  The other youths, relieved from the apprehension of
death, agreed to regard their detention as a holiday, and not being
squeamish, turned the yard into a playground, and there they
certainly made uproar, and played pranks, enough to justify the
preference of the captain for full grown criminals.  But Stephen
could not join them, for Jasper would not spare him for an instant,
and he himself, though at first sorely missing employment and
exercise, was growing drowsy and heavy limbed in his cramped life
and the evil atmosphere, even the sick longings for liberty were
gradually passing away from him, so that sometimes he felt as if he
had lived here for ages and known no other life, though no sooner
did he lie down to rest, and shut his eyes, than the trees and green
glades of the New Forest rose before him, with all the hollies
shining in the summer light, or the gorse making a sheet of gold.

The time was not in reality so very long.  On the 7th of May, John
Lincoln, the broker, who had incited Canon Peale to preach against
the foreigners, was led forth with several others of the real
promoters of the riot to the centre of Cheapside, where Lincoln was
put death, but orders were brought to respite the rest; and, at the
same time, all the armed men were withdrawn, the City began to
breathe, and the women who had been kept within doors to go abroad
again.

The Recorder of London and several aldermen were to meet the King at
his manor at Greenwich.  This was the mothers' opportunity.  The
civic dignitaries rode in mourning robes, but the wives and mothers,
sweethearts and sisters, every woman who had a youth's life at
stake, came together, took boat, and went down the river, a strange
fleet of barges, all containing white caps, and black gowns and
hoods, for all were clad in the most correct and humble citizen's
costume.

"Never was such a sight," said Jester Randall, who had taken care to
secure a view, and who had come with his report to the Dragon court.
"It might have been Ash Wednesday for the look of them, when they
landed and got into order.  One would think every prentice lad had
got at least three mothers, and four or five aunts and sisters!  I
trow, verily, that half of them came to look on at the other half,
and get a sight of Greenwich and the three queens.  However, be that
as it might, not one of them but knew how to open the sluices.
Queen Katharine noted well what was coming, and she and the Queens
of Scotland and France sat in the great chamber with the doors open.
And immediately there's a knock at the door, and so soon as the
usher opens it, in they come, three and three, every good wife of
them with her napkin to her eyes, and working away with her sobs.
Then Mistress Todd, the barber-surgeon's wife, she spoke for all,
being thought to have the more courtly tongue, having been tirewoman
to Queen Mary ere she went to France.  Verily her husband must have
penned the speech for her--for it began right scholarly, and
flowery, with a likening of themselves to the mothers of Bethlehem
(lusty innocents theirs, I trow!), but ere long the good woman
faltered and forgot her part, and broke out 'Oh! madam, you that are
a mother yourself, for the sake of your own sweet babe, give us back
our sons.' And therewith they all fell on their knees, weeping and
wringing their hands, and crying out, 'Mercy, mercy!  For our
Blessed Lady's sake, have pity on our children!' till the good
Queen, with the tears running down her cheeks for very ruth, told
them that the power was not in her hands, but the will was for them
and their poor sons, and that she would strive so to plead for them
with the King as to win their freedom.  Meantime, there were the
aldermen watching for the King in his chamber of presence, till
forth he came, when all fell on their knees, and the Recorder spake
for them, casting all the blame on the vain and light persons who
had made that enormity.  Thereupon what does our Hal but make
himself as stern as though he meant to string them all up in a line.
'Ye ought to wail and be sorry,' said he, 'whereas ye say that
substantial persons were not concerned, it appeareth to the
contrary.  You did wink at the matter,' quoth he, 'and at this time
we will grant you neither favour nor good-will.'  However, none who
knew Hal's eye but could tell that 'twas all very excellent fooling,
when he bade them get to the Cardinal.  Therewith, in came the three
queens, hand in hand, with tears in their eyes, so as they might
have been the three queens that bore away King Arthur, and down they
went on their knees, and cried aloud 'Dear sir, we who are mothers
ourselves, beseech you to set the hearts at ease of all the poor
mothers who are mourning for their sons.'  Whereupon, the door being
opened, came in so piteous a sound of wailing and lamentation as our
Harry's name must have been Herod to withstand!  'Stand up, Kate,'
said he, 'stand up, sisters, and hark in your ear.  Not a hair of
the silly lads shall be touched, but they must bide lock and key
long enough to teach them and their masters to keep better ward.'
And then when the queens came back with the good tidings, such a
storm of blessings was never heard, laughings and cryings, and the
like, for verily some of the women seemed as distraught for joy as
ever they had been for grief and fear.  Moreover, Mistress Todd
being instructed of her husband, led up Mistress Hope to Queen Mary,
and told her the tale of how her husband's little brother, a mere
babe, lay sick in prison--a mere babe, a suckling as it were--and
was like to die there, unless the sooner delivered, and how our
Steve was fool enough to tarry with the poor child, pardoned though
he be.  Then the good lady wept again, and 'Good woman,' saith she
to Mistress Hope, 'the King will set thy brother free anon.  His
wrath is not with babes, nor with lads like this other of whom thou
speakest.'

"So off was she to the King again, and though he and his master
pished and pshawed, and said if one and another were to be set free
privily in this sort, there would be none to come and beg for mercy
as a warming to all malapert youngsters to keep within bounds, 'Nay,
verily,' quoth I, seeing the moment for shooting a fool's bolt among
them, 'methinks Master Death will have been a pick-lock before you
are ready for them, and then who will stand to cry mercy?'

The narrative was broken off short by a cry of jubilee in the court.
Workmen, boys, and all were thronging together, Kit Smallbones' head
towering in the midst.  Vehement welcomes seemed in progress.
"Stephen!  Stephen!" shouted Dennet, and flew out of the hall and
down the steps.

"The lad himself!" exclaimed the jester, leaping down after her.

"Stephen, the good boy!" said Master Headley, descending more
slowly, but not less joyfully.

Yes, Stephen himself it was, who had quietly walked into the court.
Master Hope and Master Todd had brought the order for Jasper's
release, had paid the captain's exorbitant fees for both, and, while
the sick boy was carried home in a litter, Stephen had entered the
Dragon court through the gates, as if he were coming home from an
errand; though the moment he was recognised by the little four-year
old Smallbones, there had been a general rush and shout of ecstatic
welcome, led by Giles Headley, who fairly threw himself on Stephen's
neck, as they met like comrades after a desperate battle.  Not one
was there who did not claim a grasp of the boy's hand, and who did
not pour out welcomes and greetings, while in the midst, the
released captive looked, to say the truth, very spiritless, faded,
dusty, nay dirty.  The court seemed spinning round with him, and the
loud welcomes roared in his ears.  He was glad that Dennet took one
hand, and Giles the other, declaring that he must be led to the
grandmother instantly.

He muttered something about being in too foul trim to go near her,
but Dennet held him fast, and he was too dizzy to make much
resistance.  Old Mrs. Headley was better again, though not able to
do much but sit by the fire kept burning to drive away the plague
which was always smouldering in London.

She held out her hands to Stephen, as he knelt down by her.  "Take
an old woman's blessing, my good youth," she said.  "Right glad am I
to see thee once more.  Thou wilt not be the worse for the pains
thou hast spent on the little lad, though they have tried thee
sorely."

Stephen, becoming somewhat less dazed, tried to fulfil his long
cherished intention of thanking Dennet for her intercession, but the
instant he tried to speak, to his dismay and indignation, tears
choked his voice, and he could do nothing but weep, as if, thought
he, his manhood had been left behind in the jail.

"Vex not thyself," said the old dame, as she saw him struggling with
his sobs.  "Thou art worn out--Giles here was not half his own man
when he came out, nor is he yet.  Nay, beset him not, children.  He
should go to his chamber, change these garments, and rest ere
supper-time."

Stephen was fain to obey, only murmuring an inquiry for his brother,
to which his uncle responded that if Ambrose were at home, the
tidings would send him to the Dragon instantly; but he was much with
his old master, who was preparing to leave England, his work here
being ruined.

The jester then took leave, accepting conditionally an invitation to
supper.  Master Headley, Smallbones, and Tibble now knew who he was,
but the secret was kept from all the rest of the household, lest
Stephen should be twitted with the connection.

Cold water was not much affected by the citizens of London, but
smiths' and armourers' work entailed a freer use of it than less
grimy trades; and a bath and Sunday garments made Stephen more like
himself, though still he felt so weary and depressed that he missed
the buoyant joy of release to which he had been looking forward.

He was sitting on the steps, leaning against the rail, so much tired
that he hoped none of his comrades would notice that he had come
out, when Ambrose hurried into the court, having just heard tidings
of his freedom, and was at his side at once.  The two brothers sat
together, leaning against one another as if they had all that they
could wish or long for.  They had not met for more than a week, for
Ambrose's finances had not availed to fee the turnkeys to give him
entrance.

"And what art thou doing, Ambrose?" asked Stephen, rousing a little
from his lethargy.  "Methought I heard mine uncle say thine
occupation was gone?"

"Even so," replied Ambrose.  "Master Lucas will sail in a week's
time to join his brother at Rotterdam, bearing with him what he hath
been able to save out of the havoc.  I wot not if I shall ever see
the good man more."

"I am glad thou dost not go with him," said Stephen, with a hand on
his brother's leather-covered knee.

"I would not put seas between us," returned Ambrose.  "Moreover,
though I grieve to lose my good master, who hath been so scurvily
entreated here, yet, Stephen, this trouble and turmoil hath brought
me that which I longed for above all, even to have speech with the
Dean of St. Paul's."

He then told Stephen how he had brought Dean Colet to administer the
last rites to Abenali, and how that good man had bidden Lucas to
take shelter at the Deanery, in the desolation of his own abode.
This had led to conversation between the Dean and the printer;
Lucas, who distrusted all ecclesiastics, would accept no patronage.
He had a little hoard, buried in the corner of his stall, which
would suffice to carry him to his native home and he wanted no more;
but he had spoken of Ambrose, and the Dean was quite ready to be
interested in the youth who had led him to Abenali.

"He had me to his privy chamber," said Ambrose, "and spake to me as
no man hath yet spoken--no, not even Tibble.  He let me utter all my
mind, nay, I never wist before even what mine own thoughts were till
he set them before me--as it were in a mirror."

"Thou wast ever in a harl," said Stephen, drowsily using the
Hampshire word for whirl or entanglement.

"Yea.  On the one side stood all that I had ever believed or learnt
before I came hither of the one true and glorious Mother-Church to
whom the Blessed Lord had committed the keys of His kingdom, through
His holy martyrs and priests to give us the blessed host and lead us
in the way of salvation.  And on the other side, I cannot but see
the lewd and sinful and worldly lives of the most part, and hear the
lies whereby they amass wealth and turn men from the spirit of truth
and holiness to delude them into believing that wilful sin can be
committed without harm, and that purchase of a parchment is as good
as repentance.  That do I see and hear.  And therewith my master
Lucas and Dan Tindall, and those of the new light, declare that all
has been false even from the very outset, and that all the pomp and
beauty is but Satan's bait, and that to believe in Christ alone is
all that needs to justify us, casting all the rest aside.  All
seemed a mist, and I was swayed hither and thither till the more I
read and thought, the greater was the fog.  And this--I know not
whether I told it to yonder good and holy doctor, or whether he knew
it, for his eyes seemed to see into me, and he told me that he had
felt and thought much the same.  But on that one great truth, that
faith in the Passion is salvation, is the Church built, though
sinful men have hidden it by their errors and lies as befell before
among the Israelites, whose law, like ours, was divine.  Whatever is
entrusted to man, he said, will become stained, soiled, and twisted,
though the power of the Holy Spirit will strive to renew it.  And
such an outpouring of cleansing and renewing power is, he saith,
abroad in our day.  When he was a young man, this good father, so he
said, hoped great things, and did his best to set forth the truth,
both at Oxford and here, as indeed he hath ever done, he and the
good Doctor Erasmus striving to turn men's eyes back to the
simplicity of God's Word rather than to the arguments and deductions
of the schoolmen.  And for the abuses of evil priests that have
sprung up, my Lord Cardinal sought the Legatine Commission from our
holy father at Rome to deal with them.  But Dr. Colet saith that
there are other forces at work, and he doubteth greatly whether this
same cleansing can be done without some great and terrible rending
and upheaving, that may even split the Church as it were asunder--
since judgment surely awaiteth such as will not be reformed.  But,
quoth he, 'our Mother-Church is God's own Church and I will abide by
her to the end, as the means of oneness with my Lord and Head, and
do thou the same, my son, for thou art like to be more sorely tried
than will a frail old elder like me, who would fain say his Nunc
Dimittis, if such be the Lord's will, ere the foundations be cast
down.'"

Ambrose had gone on rehearsing all these words with the absorption
of one to whom they were everything, till it occurred to him to
wonder that Stephen had listened to so much with patience and
assent, and then, looking at the position of head and hands, he
perceived that his brother was asleep, and came to a sudden halt.
This roused Stephen to say, "Eh?  What?  The Dean, will he do aught
for thee?"

"Yea," said Ambrose, recollecting that there was little use in
returning to the perplexities which Stephen could not enter into.
"He deemed that in this mood of mine, yea, and as matters now be at
the universities, I had best not as yet study there for the
priesthood.  But he said he would commend me to a friend whose life
would better show me how the new gives life to the old than any man
he wots of."

"One of thy old doctors in barnacles, I trow," said Stephen.

"Nay, verily.  We saw him t'other night perilling his life to stop
the poor crazy prentices, and save the foreigners.  Dennet and our
uncle saw him pleading for them with the King."

"What!  Sir Thomas More?"

"Ay, no other.  He needs a clerk for his law matters, and the Dean
said he would speak of me to him.  He is to sup at the Deanery to-
morrow, and I am to be in waiting to see him.  I shall go with a
lighter heart now that thou art beyond the clutches of the captain
of Newgate."

"Speak no more of that!" said Stephen, with a shudder.  "Would that
I could forget it!"

In truth Stephen's health had suffered enough to change the bold,
high-spirited, active had, so that he hardly knew himself.  He was
quite incapable of work all the next day, and Mistress Headley began
to dread that he had brought home jail fever, and insisted on his
being inspected by the barber-surgeon, Todd, who proceeded to bleed
the patient, in order, as he said, to carry off the humours
contracted in the prison.  He had done the same by Jasper Hope, and
by Giles, but he followed the treatment up with better counsel,
namely, that the lads should all be sent out of the City to some
farm where they might eat curds and whey, until their strength
should be restored.  Thus they would be out of reach of the sweating
sickness which was already in some of the purlieus of St.
Katharine's Docks, and must be specially dangerous in their lowered
condition.

Master Hope came in just after this counsel had been given.  He had
a sister married to the host of a large prosperous inn near Windsor,
and he proposed to send not only Jasper but Stephen thither, feeling
how great a debt of gratitude he owed to the lad.  Remembering well
the good young Mistress Streatfield, and knowing that the Antelope
was a large old house of excellent repute, where she often lodged
persons of quality attending on the court or needing country air,
Master Headley added Giles to the party at his own expense, and
wished also to send Dennet for greater security, only neither her
grandmother nor Mrs. Hope could leave home.

It ended, however, in Perronel Randall being asked to take charge of
the whole party, including Aldonza.  That little damsel had been in
a manner confided to her both by the Dean of St. Paul's and by
Tibble Steelman--and indeed the motherly woman, after nursing and
soothing her through her first despair at the loss of her father,
was already loving her heartily, and was glad to give her a place in
the home which Ambrose was leaving on being made an attendant on Sir
Thomas More.

For the interview at the Deanery was satisfactory.  The young man,
after a good supper, enlivened by the sweet singing of some chosen
pupils of St. Paul's school, was called up to where the Dean sat,
and with him, the man of the peculiarly sweet countenance, with the
noble and deep expression, yet withal, something both tender and
humorous in it.

They made him tell his whole life, and asked many questions about
Abenali, specially about the fragment of Arabic scroll which had
been clutched in his hand even as he lay dying.  They much regretted
never having known of his existence till too late.  "Jewels lie
before the unheeding!" said More.  Then Ambrose was called on to
show a specimen of his own penmanship, and to write from Sir
Thomas's dictation in English and in Latin.  The result was that he
was engaged to act as one of the clerks Sir Thomas employed in his
occupations alike as lawyer, statesman, and scholar.

"Methinks I have seen thy face before," said Sir Thomas, looking
keenly at him.  "I have beheld those black eyes, though with a
different favour."

Ambrose blushed deeply.  "Sir, it is but honest to tell you that my
mother's brother is jester to my Lord Cardinal."

"Quipsome Hal Merriman!  Patch as the King calleth him!" exclaimed
Sir Thomas.  "A man I have ever thought wore the motley rather from
excess, than infirmity, of wit."

"Nay, sir, so please you, it was his good heart that made him a
jester," said Ambrose, explaining the story of Randall and his
Perronel in a few words, which touched the friends a good deal, and
the Dean remembered that she was in charge of the little Moresco
girl.  He lost nothing by dealing thus openly with his new master,
who promised to keep his secret for him, then gave him handsel of
his salary, and bade him collect his possessions, and come to take
up his abode in the house of the More family at Chelsea.

He would still often see his brother in the intervals of attending
Sir Thomas to the courts of law, but the chief present care was to
get the boys into purer air, both to expedite their recovery and to
ensure them against being dragged into the penitential company who
were to ask for their lives on the 22nd of May, consisting of such
of the prisoners who could still stand or go--for jail-fever was
making havoc among them, and some of the better-conditioned had been
released by private interest.  The remainder, not more than half of
the original two hundred and seventy-eight, were stripped to their
shirts, had halters hung round their necks, and then, roped together
as before, were driven through the streets to Westminster, where the
King sat enthroned.  There, looking utterly miserable, they fell on
their knees before him, and received his pardon for their
misdemeanours.  They returned to their masters, and so ended that
Ill May-day, which was the longer remembered because one Churchill,
a ballad-monger in St. Paul's Churchyard, indited a poem on it,
wherein he swelled the number of prentices to two thousand, and of
the victims to two hundred.  Will Wherry, who escaped from among the
prisoners very forlorn, was recommended by Ambrose to the work of a
carter at the Dragon, which he much preferred to printing.



CHAPTER XIX.  AT THE ANTELOPE



"Say, Father Thames, for thou hast seen
   Full many a sprightly race,
Disporting on thy margent green,
   The paths of pleasure trace."
--GRAY

Master Hope took all the guests by boat to Windsor, and very soon
the little party at the Antelope was in a state of such perfect
felicity as became a proverb with them all their lives afterwards.
It was an inn wherein to take one's ease, a large hostel full of
accommodation for man and horse, with a big tapestried room of
entertainment below, where meals were taken, with an oriel window
with a view of the Round Tower, and above it a still more charming
one, known as the Red Rose, because one of the Dukes of Somerset had
been wont to lodge there.  The walls were tapestried with the story
of St. Genoveva of Brabant, fresh and new on Mrs. Streatfield's
marriage; there was a huge bed with green curtains of that dame's
own work, where one might have said


"Above, below, the rose of snow,
Twined with her blushing foe we spread."


so as to avoid all offence.  There was also a cupboard or sideboard
of the choicer plate belonging to the establishment, and another
awmry containing appliances for chess and backgammon, likewise two
large chairs, several stools, and numerous chests.

This apartment was given up to Mistress Randall and the two girls,
subject however to the chance of turning out for any very
distinguished guests.  The big bed held all three, and the chamber
was likewise their sitting-room, though they took their meals down
stairs, and joined the party in the common room in the evening
whenever they were not out of doors, unless there were guests whom
Perronel did not think desirable company for her charges.  Stephen
and Giles were quartered in a small room known as the Feathers,
smelling so sweet of lavender and woodruff that Stephen declared it
carried him back to the Forest.  Mrs. Streatfield would have taken
Jasper to tend among her children, but the boy could not bear to be
without Stephen, and his brother advised her to let it be so, and
not try to make a babe of him again.

The guest-chamber below stairs opened at one end into the innyard, a
quadrangle surrounded with stables, outhouses, and offices, with a
gallery running round to give access to the chambers above, where,
when the Court was at Windsor, two or three great men's trains of
retainers might be crowded together.

One door, however, in the side of the guest-chamber had steps down
to an orchard, full of apple and pear trees in their glory of pink
bud and white blossom, borders of roses, gillyflowers, and lilies of
the valley running along under the grey walls.  There was a broad
space of grass near the houses, whence could be seen the Round Tower
of the Castle looking down in protection, while the background of
the view was filled up with a mass of the foliage of Windsor forest,
in the spring tints.

Stephen never thought of its being beautiful, but he revelled in the
refreshment of anything so like home, and he had nothing to wish for
but his brother, and after all he was too contented and happy even
to miss him much.

Master Streatfield was an elderly man, fat and easygoing, to whom
talking seemed rather a trouble than otherwise, though he was very
good-natured.  His wife was a merry, lively, active woman, who had
been handed over to him by her father like a piece of Flanders
cambric, but who never seemed to regret her position, managed men
and maids, farm and guests, kept perfect order without seeming to do
so, and made great friends with Perronel, never guessing that she
had been one of the strolling company, who, nine or ten years
before, had been refused admission to the Antelope, then crowded
with my Lord of Oxford's followers.

At first, it was enough for the prentices to spend most of their
time in lying about on the grass under the trees.  Giles, who was in
the best condition, exerted himself so far as to try to learn chess
from Aldonza, who seemed to be a proficient in the game, and even
defeated the good-natured burly parson who came every evening to the
Antelope, to imbibe slowly a tankard of ale, and hear any news there
stirring.

She and Giles were content to spend hours over her instructions in
chess on that pleasant balcony in the shade of the house.  Though
really only a year older than Dennet Headley, she looked much more,
and was so in all her ways.  It never occurred to her to run
childishly wild with delight in the garden and orchard as did
Dennet, who, with little five-years-old Will Streatfield for her
guide and playfellow, rushed about hither and thither, making
acquaintance with hens and chickens, geese and goslings, seeing cows
and goats milked, watching butter churned, bringing all manner of
animal and vegetable curiosities to Stephen to be named and
explained, and enjoying his delight in them, a delight which after
the first few days became more and more vigorous.

By and by there was punting and fishing on the river, strawberry
gathering in the park, explorations of the forest, expeditions of
all sorts and kinds, Jasper being soon likewise well enough to share
in them.  The boys and girls were in a kind of fairy hand under
Perronel's kind wing, the wandering habits of whose girlhood made
the freedom of the country far more congenial to her than it would
have been to any regular Londoner.

Stephen was the great oracle, of course, as to the deer respectfully
peeped at in the park, or the squirrels, the hares and rabbits, in
the forest, and the inhabitants of the stream above or below.  It
was he who secured and tamed the memorials of their visit--two
starlings for Dennet and Aldonza.  The birds were to be taught to
speak, and to do wonders of all kinds, but Aldonza's bird was found
one morning dead, and Giles consoled her by the promise of something
much bigger, and that would talk much better.  Two days after he
brought her a young jackdaw.  Aldonza clasped her hands and admired
its glossy back and queer blue eye, and was in transports when it
uttered something between "Jack" and "good lack."  But Dennet looked
in scorn at it, and said, "That's a bird tamed already.  He didn't
catch it.  He only bought it!  I would have none such!  An ugsome
great thieving bird!"

"Nay now, Mistress Dennet," argued Perronel.  "Thou hast thy bird,
and Alice has lost hers.  It is not meet to grudge it to her."

"I!  Grudge it to her!" said Dennet, with a toss of the head.  "I
grudge her nought from Giles Headley, so long as I have my Goldspot
that Stephen climbed the wall for, his very self."

And Dennet turned majestically away with her bird--Goldspot only in
the future--perched on her finger; while Perronel shook her head
bodingly.

But they were all children still, and Aldonza was of a nature that
was slow to take offence, while it was quite true that Dennet had
been free from jealousy of the jackdaw, and only triumphant in
Stephen's prowess and her own starling.

The great pleasure of all was a grand stag-hunt, got up for the
diversion of the French ambassadors, who had come to treat for the
espousals of the infant Princess Mary with the baby "Dolphyne."
Probably these illustrious personages did not get half the pleasure
out of it that the Antelope party had.  Were they not, by special
management of a yeoman pricker who had recognised in Stephen a
kindred spirit, and had a strong admiration for Mistress Randall,
placed where there was the best possible view of hunters, horses,
and hounds, lords and ladies, King and ambassadors, in their
gorgeous hunting trim?  Did not Stephen, as a true verdurer's son,
interpret every note on the horn, and predict just what was going to
happen, to the edification of all his hearers?  And when the final
rush took place, did not the prentices, with their gowns rolled up,
dart off headlong in pursuit?  Dennet entertained some hope that
Stephen would again catch some runaway steed, or come to the King's
rescue in some way or other, but such chances did not happen every
day.  Nay, Stephen did not even follow up the chase to the death,
but left Giles to do that, turning back forsooth because that little
Jasper thought fit to get tired and out of breath, and could not
find his way back alone.  Dennet was quite angry with Stephen and
turned her back on him, when Giles came in all glorious, at having
followed up staunchly all day, having seen the fate of the poor
stag, and having even beheld the King politely hand the knife to
Monsieur de Montmorency to give the first stroke to the quarry!

That was the last exploit.  There was to be a great tilting match in
honour of the betrothal, and Master Alderman Headley wanted his
apprentices back again, and having been satisfied by a laborious
letter from Dennet, sent per carrier, that they were in good health,
despatched orders by the same means, that they were to hire horses
at the Antelope and return--Jasper coming back at the same time,
though his aunt would fain have kept him longer.

Women on a journey almost always rode double, and the arrangement
came under debate.  Perronel, well accustomed to horse, ass, or
foot, undertook to ride behind the child, as she called Jasper, who-
-as a born Londoner--knew nothing of horses, though both the other
prentices did.  Giles, who, in right of his name, kindred, and
expectations, always held himself a sort of master, declared that
"it was more fitting that Stephen should ride before Mistiness
Dennet."  And to this none of the party made any objection, except
that Perronel privately observed to him that she should have thought
he would have preferred the company of his betrothed.

"I shall have quite enough of her by and by," returned Giles; then
adding, "She is a good little wench, but it is more for her honour
that her father's servant should ride before her."

Perronel held her tongue, and they rode merrily back to London, and
astonished their several homes by the growth and healthful looks of
the young people.  Even Giles was grown, though he did not like to
be told so, and was cherishing the down on his chin.  But the most
rapid development had been in Aldonza, or Alice, as Perronel
insisted on calling her to suit the ears of her neighbours.  The
girl was just reaching the borderland of maidenhood, which came all
the sooner to one of southern birth and extraction, when the great
change took her from being her father's childish darling to be
Perronel's companion and assistant.  She had lain down on that fatal
May Eve a child, she rose in the little house by the Temple Gardens,
a maiden, and a very lovely one, with delicate, refined, beautifully
cut features of a slightly aquiline cast, a bloom on her soft
brunette cheek, splendid dark liquid eyes shaded by long black
lashes, under brows as regular and well arched as her Eastern
cousins could have made them artificially, magnificent black hair,
that could hardly be contained in the close white cap, and a lithe
beautiful figure on which the plainest dress sat with an Eastern
grace.  Perronel's neighbours did not admire her.  They were not
sure whether she were most Saracen, gipsy, or Jew.  In fact, she was
as like Rachel at the well as her father had been to a patriarch,
and her descent was of the purest Saracen lineage, but a Christian
Saracen was an anomaly the London mind could not comprehend, and her
presence in the family tended to cast suspicion that Master Randall
himself, with his gipsy eyes, and mysterious comings and goings,
must have some strange connections.  For this, however, Perronel
cared little.  She had made her own way for many years past, and had
won respect and affection by many good offices to her neighbours,
one of whom had taken her laundry work in her absence.

Aldonza was by no means indocile or incapable.  She shared in
Perronel's work without reluctance, making good use of her slender,
dainty brown fingers, whether in cooking, household work, washing,
ironing, plaiting, making or mending the stiff lawn collars and
cuffs in which her hostess's business lay.  There was nothing that
she would not do when asked, or when she saw that it would save
trouble to good mother Perronel, of whom she was very fond, and she
seemed serene and contented, never wanting to go abroad; but she was
very silent, and Perronel declared herself never to have seen any
living woman so perfectly satisfied to do nothing.  The good dame
herself was industrious, not only from thrift but from taste, and if
not busy in her vocation or in household business, was either using
her distaff or her needle, or chatting with her neighbours--often
doing both at once; but though Aldonza could spin, sew, and
embroider admirably, and would do so at the least request from her
hostess, it was always a sort of task, and she never seemed so happy
as when seated on the floor, with her dark eyes dreamily fixed on
the narrow window, where hung her jackdaw's cage, and the beads of
her rosary passing through her fingers.  At first Mistress Randall
thought she was praying, but by and by came to the conviction that
most of the time "the wench was bemused."  There was nothing to
complain of in one so perfectly gentle and obedient, and withal,
modest and devout; but the good woman, after having for some time
given her the benefit of the supposition that she was grieving for
her father, began to wonder at such want of activity and animation,
and to think that on the whole Jack was the more talkative
companion.

Aldonza had certainly not taught him the phrases he was so fond of
repeating.  Giles Headley had undertaken his education, and made it
a reason for stealing down to the Temple many an evening after work
was done, declaring that birds never learnt so well as after dark.
Moreover, he had possessed himself of a chess board, and insisted
that Aldonza should carry on her instructions in the game; he
brought her all his Holy Cross Day gain of nuts, and he used all his
blandishments to persuade Mrs. Randall to come and see the shooting
at the popinjay, at Mile End.

All this made the good woman uneasy.  Her husband was away, for the
dread of sweating sickness had driven the Court from London, and she
could only take counsel with Tibble Steelman.  It was Hallowmas Eve,
and Giles had been the bearer of an urgent invitation from Dennet to
her friend Aldonza to come and join the diversions of the evening.
There was a large number of young folk in the hall--Jasper Hope
among them--mostly contemporaries of Dennet, and almost children,
all keen upon the sports of the evening, namely, a sort of indoor
quintain, where the revolving beam was decorated with a lighted
candle at one end, and at the other an apple to be caught at by the
players with their mouths, their hands being tied behind them.

Under all the uproarious merriment that each attempt occasioned,
Tibble was about to steal off to his own chamber and his beloved
books, when, as he backed out of the group of spectators, he was
arrested by Mistress Randall, who had made her way into the rear of
the party at the same time.

"Can I have a word with you, privily, Master Steelman?" she asked.

Unwillingly he muttered, "Yea, so please you;" and they retreated to
a window at the dark end of the hall, where Perronel began--"The
alderman's daughter is contracted to young Giles, her kinsman, is
she not?"

"Not as yet in form, but by the will of the parents," returned
Tibble, impatiently, as he thought of the half-hour's reading which
he was sacrificing to woman's gossip.

"An it be so," returned Perronel, "I would fain--were I Master
Headley--that he spent not so many nights in gazing at mine Alice."

"Forbid him the house, good dame."

"Easier spoken than done," returned Perronel.  "Moreover, 'tis
better to let the matter, such as it is, be open in my sight than to
teach them to run after one another stealthily, whereby worse might
ensue."

"Have they spoken then to one another?" asked Tibble, beginning to
take alarm.

"I trow not.  I deem they know not yet what draweth them together."

"Pish, they are mere babes!" quoth Tib, hoping he might cast it off
his mind.

"Look!" said Perronel; and as they stood on the somewhat elevated
floor of the bay window, they could look over the heads of the other
spectators to the seats where the young girls sat.

Aldonza's beautiful and peculiar contour of head and face rose among
the round chubby English faces like a jessamine among daisies, and
at that moment she was undertaking, with an exquisite smile, the
care of the gown that Giles laid at her feet, ere making his
venture.

"There!" said Perronel.  "Mark that look on her face!  I never see
it save for that same youngster.  The children are simple and
guileless thus far, it may be.  I dare be sworn that she is, but
they wot not where they will be led on."

"You are right, dame; you know best, no doubt," said Tib, in
helpless perplexity.  "I wot nothing of such gear.  What would you
do?"

"Have the maid wedded at once, ere any harm come of it," returned
Perronel promptly.  "She will make a good wife--there will be no
complaining of her tongue, and she is well instructed in all good
housewifery."

"To whom then would you give her?" asked Tibble.

"Ay, that's the question.  Comely and good she is, but she is
outlandish, and I fear me 'twould take a handsome portion to get her
dark skin and Moorish blood o'erlooked.  Nor hath she aught, poor
maid, save yonder gold and pearl earrings, and a cross of gold that
she says her father bade her never part with."

"I pledged my word to her father," said Tibble, "that I would have a
care of her.  I have not cared to hoard, having none to come after
me, but if a matter of twenty or five-and-twenty marks would avail--
"

"Wherefore not take her yourself?" said Perronel, as he stood
aghast.  "She is a maid of sweet obedient conditions, trained by a
scholar even like yourself.  She would make your chamber fair and
comfortable, and tend you dutifully."

"Whisht, good woman.  'Tis too dark to see, or you could not speak
of wedlock to such as I.  Think of the poor maid!"

"That is all folly!  She would soon know you for a better husband
than one of those young feather-pates, who have no care but of
themselves."

"Nay, mistress," said Tibble, gravely, "your advice will not serve
here.  To bring that fair young wench hither, to this very court,
mind you, with a mate loathly to behold as I be, and with the lad
there ever before her, would be verily to give place to the devil."

"But you are the best sword-cutler in London.  You could make a
living without service."

"I am bound by too many years of faithful kindness to quit my master
or my home at the Dragon," said Tibble.  "Nay, that will not serve,
good friend."

"Then what can be done?" asked Perronel, somewhat in despair.
"There are the young sparks at the Temple.  One or two of them are
already beginning to cast eyes at her, so that I dare not let her
help me carry home my basket, far less go alone.  'Tis not the
wench's fault.  She shrinks from men's eyes more than any maid I
ever saw, but if she bide long with me, I wot not what may come of
it.  There be rufflers there who would not stick to carry her off!"

Tibble stood considering, and presently said, "Mayhap the Dean might
aid thee in this matter.  He is free of hand and kind of heart, and
belike he would dower the maid, and find an honest man to wed her."

Perronel thought well of the suggestion, and decided that after the
mass on All Soul's Day, and the general visiting of the graves of
kindred, she would send Aldonza home with Dennet, whom they were
sure to meet in the Pardon Churchyard, since her mother, as well as
Abenali and Martin Fulford lay there; and herself endeavour to see
Dean Colet, who was sure to be at home, as he was hardly recovered
from an attack of the prevalent disorder.

Then Tibble escaped, and Perronel drew near to the party round the
fire, where the divination of the burning of nuts was going on, but
not successfully, since no pair hitherto put in would keep together.
However, the next contribution was a snail, which had been captured
on the wall, and was solemnly set to crawl on the hearth by Dennet,
"to see whether it would trace a G or an H."

However, the creature proved sullen or sleepy, and no jogging of
hands, no enticing, would induce it to crawl an inch, and the
alderman, taking his daughter on his knee, declared that it was a
wise beast, who knew her hap was fixed.  Moreover, it was time for
the rere supper, for the serving-men with the lanterns would be
coming for the young folk.

London entertainments for women or young people had to finish very
early unless they had a strong escort to go home with, for the
streets were far from safe after dark.  Giles's great desire to
convoy her home, added to Perronel's determination, and on All
Souls' Day, while knells were ringing from every church in London,
she roused Aldonza from her weeping devotions at her father's grave,
and led her to Dennet, who had just finished her round of prayers at
the grave of the mother she had never known, under the protection of
her nurse, and two or three of the servants.  The child, who had
thought little of her mother, while her grandmother was alert and
supplied the tenderness and care she needed, was beginning to yearn
after counsel and sympathy, and to wonder, as she told her beads,
what might have been, had that mother lived.  She took Aldonza's
hand, and the two girls threaded their way out of the crowded
churchyard together, while Perronel betook herself to the Deanery of
St. Paul's.

Good Colet was always accessible to the meanest, but he had been
very ill, and the porter had some doubts about troubling him
respecting the substantial young matron whose trim cap and bodice,
and full petticoats, showed no tokens of distress.  However, when
she begged him to take in her message, that she prayed the Dean to
listen to her touching the child of the old man who was slain on May
Eve, he consented; and she was at once admitted to an inner chamber,
where Colet, wrapped in a gown lined with lambskin, sat by the fire,
looking so wan and feeble that it went to the good woman's heart and
she began by an apology for troubling him.

"Heed not that, good dame," said the Dean, courteously, "but sit
thee down and let me hear of the poor child."

"Ah, reverend sir, would that she were still a child--" and Perronel
proceeded to tell her difficulties, adding, that if the Dean could
of his goodness promise one of the dowries which were yearly given
to poor maidens of good character, she would inquire among her
gossips for some one to marry the girl.  She secretly hoped he would
take the hint, and immediately portion Aldonza himself, perhaps
likewise find the husband.  And she was disappointed that he only
promised to consider the matter and let her hear from him.  She went
back and told Tibble that his device was nought, an old scholar with
one foot in the grave knew less of women than even he did!

However it was only four days later, that, as Mrs. Randall was
hanging out her collars to dry, there came up to her from the Temple
stairs a figure whom for a moment she hardly knew, so different was
the long, black garb, and short gown of the lawyer's clerk from the
shabby old green suit that all her endeavours had not been able to
save from many a stain of printer's ink.  It was only as he
exclaimed, "Good aunt, I am fain to see thee here!" that she
answered, "What, thou, Ambrose!  What a fine fellow thou art!  Truly
I knew not thou wast of such good mien!  Thou thrivest at Chelsea!"

"Who would not thrive there?" said Ambrose.  "Nay, aunt, tarry a
little, I have a message for thee that I would fain give before we
go in to Aldonza."

"From his reverence the Dean?  Hath he bethought himself of her?"

"Ay, that hath he done," said Ambrose.  "He is not the man to halt
when good may be done.  What doth he do, since it seems thou hadst
speech of him, but send for Sir Thomas More, then sitting at
Westminster, to come and see him as soon as the Court brake up, and
I attended my master.  They held council together, and by and by
they sent for me to ask me of what conditions and breeding the maid
was, and what I knew of her father?"

"Will they wed her to thee?  That were rarely good, so they gave
thee some good office!" cried his aunt.

"Nay, nay," said Ambrose.  "I have much to learn and understand ere
I think of a wife--if ever.  Nay!  But when they had heard all I
could tell them, they looked at one another, and the Dean said, 'The
maid is no doubt of high blood in her own land--scarce a mate for a
London butcher or currier."

"'It were matching an Arab mare with a costard monger's colt,' said
my master, 'or Angelica with Ralph Roisterdoister.'"

"I'd like to know what were better for the poor outlandish maid than
to give her to some honest man," put in Perronel.

"The end of it was," said Ambrose, "that Sir Thomas said he was to
be at the palace the next day, and he would strive to move the Queen
to take her countrywoman into her service.  Yea, and so he did, but
though Queen Katharine was moved by hearing of a fatherless maid of
Spain, and at first spake of taking her to wait on herself, yet when
she heard the maid's name, and that she was of Moorish blood, she
would none of her.  She said that heresy lurked in them all, and
though Sir Thomas offered that the Dean or the Queen's own chaplain
should question her on the faith, it was all lost labour.  I heard
him tell the Dean as much, and thus it is that they bade me come for
thee, and for the maid, take boat, and bring you down to Chelsea,
where Sir Thomas will let her be bred up to wait on his little
daughters till he can see what best may be done for her.  I trow his
spirit was moved by the Queen's hardness!  I heard the Dean mutter,
'Et venient ab Oriente et Occidente.'"

Perronel hooked alarmed.  "The Queen deemed her heretic in grain!
Ah!  She is a good wench, and of kind conditions.  I would have no
ill befall her, but I am glad to be rid of her.  Sir Thomas--he is a
wise man, ay, and a married man, with maidens of his own, and he may
have more wit in the business than the rest of his kind.  Be the
matter instant?"

"Methinks Sir Thomas would have it so, since this being a holy day,
the courts be not sitting, and he is himself at home, so that he can
present the maid to his lady.  And that makes no small odds."

"Yea, but what the lady is makes the greater odds to the maid, I
trow," said Perronel anxiously.

"Fear not on that score.  Dame Alice More is of kindly conditions,
and will be good to any whom her lord commends to her; and as to the
young ladies, never saw I any so sweet or so wise as the two elder
ones, specially Mistress Margaret."

"Well-a-day!  What must be must!" philosophically observed Perronel.
"Now I have my wish, I could mourn over it.  I am loth to part with
the wench; and my man, when he comes home, will make an outcry for
his pretty Ally; but 'tis best so.  Come, Alice, girl, bestir
thyself.  Here's preferment for thee."

Aldonza raised her great soft eyes in slow wonder, and when she had
heard what was to befall her, declared that she wanted no
advancement, and wished only to remain with mother Perronel.  Nay,
she clung to the kind woman, beseeching that she might not be sent
away from the only motherly tenderness she had ever known, and
declaring that she would work all day and all night rather than
leave her; but the more reluctance she showed, the more determined
was Perronel, and she could not but submit to her fate, only adding
one more entreaty that she might take her jackdaw, which was now a
spruce grey-headed bird.  Perronel said it would be presumption in a
waiting-woman, but Ambrose declared that at Chelsea there were all
manner of beasts and birds, beloved by the children and by their
father himself, and that he believed the daw would be welcome.  At
any rate, if the lady of the house objected to it, it could return
with Mistress Randall.

Perronel hurried the few preparations, being afraid that Giles might
take advantage of the holiday to appear on the scene, and presently
Aldonza was seated in the boat, making no more lamentations after
she found that her fate was inevitable, but sitting silent, with
downcast head, now and then brushing away a stray tear as it stole
down under her long eyelashes.

Meantime Ambrose, hoping to raise her spirits, talked to his aunt of
the friendly ease and kindliness of the new home, where he was
evidently as thoroughly happy as it was in his nature to be.  He was
much, in the position of a barrister's clerk, superior to that of
the mere servants, but inferior to the young gentlemen of larger
means, though not perhaps of better birth, who had studied law
regularly, and aspired to offices or to legal practice.

But though Ambrose was ranked with the three or four other clerks,
his functions had more relation to Sir Thomas's literary and
diplomatic avocations than his legal ones.  From Lucas Hansen he had
learnt Dutch and French, and he was thus available for copying and
translating foreign correspondence.  His knowledge of Latin and
smattering of Greek enabled him to be employed in copying into a
book some of the inestimable letters of Erasmus which arrived from
time to time, and Sir Thomas promoted his desire to improve himself,
and had requested Mr. Clements, the tutor of the children of the
house, to give him weekly lessons in Latin and Greek.

Sir Thomas had himself pointed out to him books calculated to settle
his mind on the truth and catholicity of the Church, and had warned
him against meddling with the fiery controversial tracts which,
smuggled in often through Lucas's means, had set his mind in
commotion.  And for the present at least beneath the shadow of the
great man's intelligent devotion, Ambrose's restless spirit was
tranquil.

Of course, he did not explain his state of mind to his aunt, but she
gathered enough to be well content, and tried to encourage Aldonza,
when at length they landed near Chelsea Church, and Ambrose led the
way to an extensive pleasaunce or park, full of elms and oaks, whose
yellow leaves were floating like golden rain in the sunshine.

Presently children's voices guided them to a large chestnut tree.
"Lo you now, I hear Mistress Meg's voice, and where she is, his
honour will ever be," said Ambrose.

And sure enough, among a group of five girls and one boy, all
between fourteen and nine years old, was the great lawyer, knocking
down the chestnuts with a long pole, while the young ones flew about
picking up the burrs from the grass, exclaiming joyously when they
found a full one.

Ambrose explained that of the young ladies, one was Mistress
Middleton, Lady More's daughter by a former marriage, another a
kinswoman.  Perronel was for passing by unnoticed; but Ambrose knew
better; and Sir Thomas, leaning on the pole, called out, "Ha, my
Birkenholt, a forester born, knowst thou any mode of bringing down
yonder chestnuts, which being the least within reach, seem in course
the meetest of all."

"I would I were my brother, your honour," said Ambrose, "then would
I climb the thee."

"Thou shouldst bring him one of these days," said Sir Thomas.  "But
thou hast instead brought in a fair maid.  See, Meg, yonder is the
poor young girl who lost her father on Ill May day.  Lead her on and
make her good cheer, while I speak to this good dame."

Margaret More, a slender, dark-eyed girl of thirteen, went forward
with a peculiar gentle grace to the stranger, saying, "Welcome,
sweet maid!  I hope we shall make thee happy," and seeing the
mournful countenance, she not only took Aldonza's hand, but kissed
her cheek.

Sir Thomas had exchanged a word or two with Perronel, when there was
a cry from the younger children, who had detected the wicker cage
which Perronel was trying to keep in the background.

"A daw! a daw!" was the cry.  "Is't for us?"

"Oh, mistress," faltered Aldonza, "'tis mine--there was one who
tamed it for me, and I promised ever to keep it, but if the good
knight and lady forbid it, we will send it back."

"Nay now, John, Cicely," was Margaret saying, "'tis her own bird!
Wot ye not our father will let us take nought of them that come to
him?  Yea, Al-don-za--is not that thy name?--I am sure my father
will have thee keep it."

She led up Aldonza, making the request for her.  Sir Thomas smiled.

"Keep thy bird?  Nay, that thou shalt.  Look at him, Meg, is he not
in fit livery for a lawyer's house?  Mark his trim legs, sable
doublet and hose, and grey hood--and see, he hath the very eye of a
councillor seeking for suits, as he looketh at the chestnuts John
holdeth to him.  I warrant he hath a tongue likewise.  Canst plead
for thy dinner, bird?"

"I love Giles!" uttered the black beak, to the confusion and
indignation of Perronel.

The perverse bird had heard Giles often dictate this avowal, but had
entirely refused to repeat it, till, stimulated by the new
surroundings, it had for the first time uttered it.

"Ah! thou foolish daw!  Crow that thou art!  Had I known thou hadst
such a word in thy beak, I'd have wrung thy neck sooner than have
brought thee," muttered Perronel.  "I had best take thee home
without more ado."

It was too late, however, the children were delighted, and perfectly
willing that Aldonza should own the bird, so they might hear it
speak, and thus the introduction was over.  Aldonza and her daw were
conveyed to Dame Alice More, a stout, good-tempered woman, who had
too many dependents about her house to concern herself greatly about
the introduction of another.

And thus Aldonza was installed in the long, low, two-storied red
house which was to be her place of home-like service.



CHAPTER XX.  CLOTH OF GOLD ON THE SEAMY SIDE



      "Then you lost
The view of earthly glory:  men might say
Till this time pomp was single; but now married
To one above itself."--SHAKESPEARE.

If Giles Headley murmured at Aldonza's removal, it was only to
Perronel, and that discreet woman kept it to herself.

In the summer of 1519 he was out of his apprenticeship, and though
Dennet was only fifteen, it was not uncommon for brides to be even
younger.  However, the autumn of that year was signalised by a fresh
outbreak of the sweating sickness, apparently a sort of influenza,
and no festivities could be thought of.  The King and Queen kept at
a safe distance from London, and escaped, so did the inmates of the
pleasant house at Chelsea; but the Cardinal, who, as Lord
Chancellor, could not entirely absent himself from Westminster, was
four times attacked by it, and Dean Colet, a far less robust man,
had it three times, and sank at last under it.  Sir Thomas More went
to see his beloved old friend, and knowing Ambrose's devotion, let
the young man be his attendant.  Nor could those who saw the good
man ever forget his peaceful farewells, grieving only for the old
mother who had lived with him in the Deanery, and in the ninetieth
year of her age, thus was bereaved of the last of her twenty-one
children.  For himself, he was thankful to be taken away from the
evil times he already beheld threatening his beloved St. Paul's, as
well as the entire Church both in England and abroad; looking back
with a sad sweet smile to the happy Oxford days, when he, with More
and Erasmus,


"Strained the watchful eye
If chance the golden hours were nigh
By youthful hope seen gleaming round her walls."


"But," said he, as he laid his hand in blessing for the last time on
Ambrose's head, "let men say what they will, do thou cling fast to
the Church, nor let thyself be swept away.  There are sure promises
to her, and grace is with her to purify herself, even though it be
obscured for a time.  Be not of little faith, but believe that
Christ is with us in the ship, though He seem to be asleep."

He spoke as much to his friend as to the youth, and there can be no
doubt that this consideration was the restraining force with many
who have been stigmatised as half-hearted Reformers, because though
they loved truth, they feared to lose unity.

He was a great loss at that especial time, as a restraining power,
trusted by the innovators, and a personal friend both of King and
Cardinal, and his preaching and catechising were sorely missed at
St. Paul's.

Tibble Steelman, though thinking he did not go far enough, deplored
him deeply; but Tibble himself was laid by for many days.  The
epidemic went through the Dragon court, though some had it lightly,
and only two young children actually died of it.  It laid a heavy
hand on Tibble, and as his distaste for women rendered his den
almost inaccessible to Bet Smallbones, who looked after most of the
patients, Stephen Birkenholt, whose nursing capacities had been
developed in Newgate, spent his spare hours in attending him, sat
with him in the evenings, slept on a pallet by his side, carried him
his meals and often administered them, and finally pulled him
through the illness and its effects, which left him much broken and
never likely to be the same man again.

Old Mistress Headley, who was already failing, did not have the
actual disease severely, but she never again left her bed, and died
just after Christmas, sinking slowly away with little pain, and her
memory having failed from the first.

Household affairs had thus shipped so gradually into Dennet's hands
that no change of government was perceptible, except that the keys
hung at the maiden's girdle.  She had grown out of the child during
this winter of trouble, and was here, there, and everywhere, the
busy nurse and housewife, seldom pausing to laugh or play except
with her father, and now and then to chat with her old friend and
playfellow, Kit Smallbones.  Her childish freedom of manner had
given way to grave discretion, not to say primness, in her behaviour
to her father's guests, and even the apprentices.  It was, of
course, the unconscious reaction of the maidenly spirit, aware that
she had nothing but her own modesty to protect her.  She was on a
small scale, with no pretensions to beauty, but with a fresh,
honest, sensible young face, a clear skin, and dark eyes that could
be very merry when she would let them, and her whole air and dress
were trimness itself, with an inclination to the choicest materials
permitted to an alderman's daughter.

Things were going on so smoothly that the alderman was taken by
surprise when all the good wives around began to press on him that
it was incumbent on him to lose no time in marrying his daughter to
her cousin, if not before Lent, yet certainly in the Easter
holidays.

Dennet looked very grave thereon.  Was it not over soon after the
loss of the good grandmother?  And when her father said, as the
gossips had told him, that she and Giles need only walk quietly down
some morning to St Faith's and plight their troth, she broke out
into her girlish wilful manner, "Would she be married at all without
a merry wedding?  No, indeed!  She would not have the thing done in
a corner!  What was the use of her being wedded, and having to
consort with the tedious old wives instead of the merry wrenches?
Could she not guide the house, and rule the maids, and get in the
stores, and hinder waste, and make the pasties, and brew the
possets?  Had her father found the crust hard, or missed his roasted
crab, or had any one blamed her for want of discretion?  Nay, as to
that, she was like to be more discreet as she was, with only her
good old father to please, than with a husband to plague her."

On the other hand, Giles's demeanour was rather that of one prepared
for the inevitable than that of an eager bridegroom; and when orders
began to pour in for accoutrements of unrivalled magnificence for
the King and the gentlemen who were to accompany him to Ardres,
there to meet the young King of France just after Whitsuntide,
Dennet was the first to assure her father that there would be no
time to think of weddings till all this was over, especially as some
of the establishment would have to be in attendance to repair
casualties at the jousts.

At this juncture there arrived on business Master Tiptoff, husband
to Giles's sister, bringing greetings from Mrs. Headley at
Salisbury, and inquiries whether the wedding was to take place at
Whitsuntide, in which case she would hasten to be present, and to
take charge of the household, for which her dear daughter was far
too young.  Master Tiptoff showed a suspicious alacrity in
undertaking the forwarding of his mother-in-law and her stuff.

The faces of Master Headley and Tib Steelman were a sight, both
having seen only too much of what the housewifery at Salisbury had
been.  The alderman decided on the spot that there could be no
marriage till after the journey to France, since Giles was certainly
to go upon it; and lest Mrs. Headley should be starting on her
journey, he said he should despatch a special messenger to stay her.
Giles, who had of course been longing for the splendid pageant,
cheered up into great amiability, and volunteered to write to his
mother, that she had best not think of coming, till he sent word to
her that matters were forward.  Even thus, Master Headley was
somewhat insecure.  He thought the dame quite capable of coming and
taking possession of his house in his absence, and therefore
resolved upon staying at home to garrison it; but there was then the
further difficulty that Tibble was in no condition to take his place
on the journey.  If the rheumatism seized his right arm, as it had
done in the winter, he would be unable to drive a rivet, and there
would be every danger of it, high summer though it were; for though
the party would carry their own tent and bedding, the knights and
gentlemen would be certain to take all the best places, and they
might be driven into a damp corner.  Indeed it was not impossible
that their tent itself might be seized, for many a noble or his
attendants might think that beggarly artisans had no right to
comforts which he had been too improvident to afford, especially if
the alderman himself were absent.

Not only did Master Headley really love his trusty foreman too well
to expose him to such chances, but Tibble knew too well that there
were brutal young men to whom his contorted-visage would be an
incitement to contempt and outrage, and that if racked with
rheumatism, he would only be an incumbrance.  There was nothing for
it but to put Kit Smallbones at the head of the party.  His imposing
presence would keep off wanton insults, but on the other hand, he
had not the moral weight of authority possessed by Tibble, and
though far from being a drunkard, he was not proof against a
carouse, especially when out of reach of his Bet and of his master,
and he was not by any means Tib's equal in fine and delicate
workmanship.  But on the other hand, Tib pronounced that Stephen
Birkenholt was already well skilled in chasing metal and the
difficult art of restoring inlaid work, and he showed some black and
silver armour, that was in hand for the King, which fully bore out
his words.

"And thou thinkst Kit can rule the lads!" said the alderman, scarce
willingly.

"One of them at least can rule himself," said Tibble.  "They have
both been far more discreet since the fright they got on Ill May
day; and, as for Stephen, he hath seemed to me to have no eyes nor
thought save for his work of late."

"I have marked him," said the master, "and have marvelled what ailed
the lad.  His merry temper hath left him.  I never hear him singing
to keep time with his hammer, nor keeping the court in a roar with
his gibes.  I trust he is not running after the new doctrine of the
hawkers and pedlars.  His brother was inclined that way."

"There be worse folk than they, your worship," protested Tib, but he
did not pursue their defence, only adding, "but 'tis not that which
ails young Stephen.  I would it were!" he sighed to himself,
inaudibly.

"Well," said the good-natured alderman, "it may be he misseth his
brother.  The boys will care for this raree-show more than thou or
I, Tib!  We've seen enough of them in our day, though verily they
say this is to surpass all that ever were beheld!"

The question of who was to go had not been hitherto decided, and
Giles and Stephen were both so excited at being chosen that all low
spirits and moodiness were dispelled, and the work which went on
almost all night was merrily got through.  The Dragon court was in a
perpetual commotion with knights, squires, and grooms, coming in
with orders for new armour, or for old to be furbished, and the
tent-makers, lorimers, mercers, and tailors had their hands equally
full.  These lengthening mornings heard the hammer ringing at
sunrise, and in the final rush, Smallbones never went to bed at all.
He said he should make it up in the waggon on the way to Dover.
Some hinted that he preferred the clang of his hammer to the good
advice his Bet lavished on him at every leisure moment to forewarn
him against French wine-pots.

The alderman might be content with the party he sent forth, for Kit
had hardly his equal in size, strength, and good humour.  Giles had
developed into a tall, comely young man, who had got rid of his
country slouch, and whose tall figure, light locks, and ruddy cheeks
looked well in the new suit which gratified his love of finery,
sober-hued as it needs must be.  Stephen was still bound to the old
prentice garb, though it could not conceal his good mien, the bright
sparkling dark eyes, crisp black hair, healthy brown skin, and lithe
active figure.  Giles had a stout roadster to ride on, the others
were to travel in their own waggon, furnished with four powerful
horses, which, if possible, they were to take to Calais, so as to be
independent of hiring.  Their needments, clothes, and tools, were
packed in the waggon, with store of lances, and other appliances of
the tourney.  A carter and Will Wherry, who was selected as being
supposed to be conversant with foreign tongues, were to attend on
them; Smallbones, as senior journeyman, had the control of the
party, and Giles had sufficiently learnt subordination not to be
likely to give himself dangerous airs of mastership.

Dennet was astir early to see them off, and she had a little gift
for each.  She began with her oldest friend.  "See here, Kit," she
said, "here's a wallet to hold thy nails and rivets.  What wilt thou
say to me for such a piece of stitchery?"

"Say, pretty mistress?  Why this!" quoth the giant, and he picked
her up by the slim waist in his great hands, and kissed her on the
forehead.  He had done the like many a time nine or ten years ago,
and though Master Headley laughed, Dennet was not one bit
embarrassed, and turned to the next traveller.  "Thou art no more a
prentice, Giles, and canst wear this in thy bonnet," she said,
holding out to him a short silver chain and medal of St. George and
the Dragon.

"Thanks, gentle maid," said Giles, taking the handsome gift a little
sheepishly.  "My bonnet will make a fair show," and he bent down as
she stood on the step, and saluted her lips, then began eagerly
fastening the chain round his cap, as one delighted with the
ornament.

Stephen was some distance off.  He had turned aside when she spoke
to Giles, and was asking of Tibble last instructions about the
restoration of enamel, when he felt a touch on his arm, and saw
Dennet standing by him.  She looked up in his face, and held up a
crimson silken purse, with S. B embroidered on it with a wreath of
oak and holly leaves.

With the air that ever showed his gentle blood, Stephen put a knee
to the ground, and kissed the fingers that held it to him, whereupon
Dennet, a sudden burning blush overspreading her face under her
little pointed hood, turned suddenly round and ran into the house.
She was out again on the steps when the waggon finally got under
weigh, and as her eyes met Stephen's, he doffed his flat cap with
one hand, and laid the other on his heart, so that she knew where
her purse had taken up its abode.

Of the Field of the Cloth of Gold not much need be said.  To the end
of the lives of the spectators, it was a tale of wonder.  Indeed
without that, the very sight of the pavilions was a marvel in
itself, the blue dome of Francis spangled in imitation of the sky,
with sun, moon, and stars; and the feudal castle of Henry, a three
months' work, each surrounded with tents of every colour and pattern
which fancy could devise, with the owners' banners or pennons
floating from the summits, and every creature, man, and horse,
within the enchanted precincts, equally gorgeous.  It was the
brightest and the last full display of magnificent pseudo chivalry,
and to Stephen's dazzled eye, seeing it beneath the slant rays of
the setting sun of June, it was a fairy tale come to life.  Hal
Randall, who was in attendance on the Cardinal, declared that it was
a mere surfeit of jewels and gold and silver, and that a frieze
jerkin or leathern coat was an absolute refreshment to the sight.
He therefore spent all the time he was off duty in the forge far in
the rear, where Smallbones and his party had very little but hard
work, mending, whetting, furbishing, and even changing devices.
Those six days of tilting when "every man that stood, showed like a
mine," kept the armourers in full occupation night and day, and only
now and then could the youths try to make their way to some spot
whence they could see the tournament.

Smallbones was more excited by the report of fountains of good red
and white wines of all sorts, flowing perpetually in the court of
King Henry's splended mock castle; but fortunately one gulp was
enough for an English palate nurtured on ale and mead, and he was
disgusted at the heaps of country folk, men-at-arms, beggars and
vagabonds of all kinds, who swilled the liquor continually, and, in
loathsome contrast to the external splendours, lay wallowing on the
ground so thickly that it was sometimes hardly possible to move
without treading on them.

"I stumbled over a dozen," said the jester, as he strolled into the
little staked inclosure that the Dragon party had arranged round
their tent for the prosecution of their labours, which were too
important to all the champions not to be respected.  "Lance and
sword have not laid so many low in the lists as have the doughty
Baron Burgundy and the heady knight Messire Sherris Sack."

"Villain Verjuice and Varlet Vinegar is what Kit there calls them,"
said Stephen, looking up from the work he was carrying on over a pan
of glowing charcoal.

"Yea," said Smallbones, intermitting his noisy operations, "and the
more of swine be they that gorge themselves on it.  I told Jack and
Hob that 'twould be shame for English folk to drown themselves like
French frogs or Flemish hogs."

"Hogs!" returned Randall.  "A decent Hampshire hog would scorn to be
lodged as many a knight and squire and lady too is now, pigging it
in styes and hovels and haylofts by night, and pranking it by day
with the best!"

"Sooth enough," said Smallbones.  "Yea, we have had two knights and
their squires beseeching us for leave to sleep under our waggon!
Not an angel had they got among the four of them either, having all
their year's income on their backs, and more too.  I trow they and
their heirs will have good cause to remember this same Field of
Gold."

"And what be'st thou doing, nevvy?" asked the jester.  "Thy trade
seems as brisk as though red blood were flowing instead of red
wine."

"I am doing my part towards making the King into Hercules," said
Stephen, "though verily the tailor hath more part therein than we
have; but he must needs have a breastplate of scales of gold, and
that by to-morrow's morn.  As Ambrose would say, 'if he will be a
pagan god, he should have what's-his-name, the smith of the gods, to
work for him.'"

"I heard of that freak," said the jester.  "There be a dozen tailors
and all the Queen's tirewomen frizzling up a good piece of cloth of
gold for the lion's mane, covering a club with green damask with
pricks, cutting out green velvet and gummed silk for his garland!
In sooth, these graces have left me so far behind in foolery that I
have not a jest left in my pouch!  So here I be, while my Lord
Cardinal is shut up with Madame d'Angouleme in the castle--the real
old castle, mind you--doing the work, leaving the kings and queens
to do their own fooling."

"Have you spoken with the French King, Hal?" asked Smallbones, who
had become a great crony of his, since the anxieties of May Eve.

"So far as I may when I have no French, and he no English!  He is a
comely fellow, with a blithe tongue and a merry eye, I warrant you a
chanticleer who will lose nought for lack of crowing.  He'll crow
louder than ever now he hath given our Harry a fall."

"No! hath he?" and Giles, Stephen, and Smallbones, all suspended
their work to listen in concern.

"Ay marry, hath he!  The two took it into their royal noddles to try
a fall, and wrestled together on the grass, when by some ill hap,
this same Francis tripped up our Harry, so that he was on the sward
for a moment.  He was up again forthwith, and in full heart for
another round, when all the Frenchmen burst in gabbling; and, though
their King was willing to play the match out fairly, they wouldn't
let him, and my Lord Cardinal said something about making ill blood,
whereat our King laughed and was content to leave it.  As I told
him, we have given the French falls enough to let them make much of
this one."

"I hope he will yet give the mounseer a good shaking," muttered
Smallbones.

"How now, Will!  Who's that at the door?  We are on his grace's work
and can touch none other man's were it the King of France himself,
or his Constable, who is finer still."

By way of expressing "No admittance except on business," Smallbones
kept Will Wherry in charge of the door of his little territory,
which having a mud wall on two sides, and a broad brook with quaking
banks on a third, had been easily fenced on the fourth, so as to
protect tent, waggon, horses, and work from the incursions of
idlers.  Will however answered, "The gentleman saith he hath kindred
here."

"Ay!" and there pushed in, past the lad a tall, lean form, with a
gay but soiled short cloak over one shoulder, a suit of worn buff, a
cap garnished with a dilapidated black and yellow feather, and a
pair of gilt spurs.  "If this be as they told me, where Armourer
Headley's folk lodge--I have here a sort of a cousin.  Yea, yonder's
the brave lad who had no qualms at the flash of a good Toledo in a
knight's fist.  How now, my nevvy!  Is not my daughter's nevvy--
mine?"

"Save your knighthood!" said Smallbones.  "Who would have looked to
see you here, Sir John?  Methought you were in the Emperor's
service!"

"A stout man-at-arms is of all services," returned Fulford.  "I'm
here with half Flanders to see this mighty show, and pick up a few
more lusty Badgers at this encounter of old comrades.  Is old
Headley here?"

"Nay, he is safe at home, where I would I were," sighed Kit.

"And you are my young master his nephew, who knew where to purvey me
of good steel," added Fulford, shaking Giles's hand.  "You are fain,
doubtless, you youngsters, to be forth without the old man.  Ha! and
you've no lack of merry company."

Harry Randall's first impulse had been to look to the right and left
for the means of avoiding this encounter, but there was no escape;
and he was moreover in most fantastic motley, arrayed in one of the
many suits provided for the occasion.  It was in imitation of a
parrot, brilliant grass-green velvet, touched here and there with
scarlet, yellow, or blue.  He had been only half disguised on the
occasion of Fulford's visit to his wife, and he perceived the start
of recognition in the eyes of the Condottiere, so that he knew it
would be vain to try to conceal his identity.

"You sought Stephen Birkenholt," he said.  "And you've lit on
something nearer, if so be you'll acknowledge the paraquito that
your Perronel hath mated with."

The Condottiere burst into a roar of laughter so violent that he had
to lean against the mud wall, and hold his sides.  "Ha, ha! that I
should be father-in-law to a fool!" and then he set off again.
"That the sober, dainty little wench should have wedded a fool!  Ha!
ha! ha!"

"Sir," cried Stephen hotly, "I would have you to know that mine
uncle here, Master Harry Randall, is a yeoman of good birth, and
that he undertook his present part to support your own father and
child!  Methinks you are the last who should jeer at and insult
him!"

"Stephen is right," said Giles.  "This is my kinsman's tent, and no
man shall say a word against Master Harry Randall therein."

"Well crowed, my young London gamebirds," returned Fulford, coolly.
"I meant no disrespect to the gentleman in green.  Nay, I am
mightily beholden to him for acting his part out and taking on
himself that would scarce befit a gentleman of a company--
impedimenta, as we used to say in the grammar school.  How does the
old man?--I must find some token to send him."

"He is beyond the reach of all tokens from you save prayers and
masses," returned Randall, gravely.

"Ay?  You say not so?  Old gaffer dead?"  And when the soldier was
told how the feeble thread of life had been snapped by the shock of
joy on his coming, a fit of compunction and sorrow seized him.  He
covered his face with his hands and wept with a loudness of grief
that surprised and touched his hearers; and presently began to
bemoan himself that he had hardly a mark in his purse to pay for a
mass; but therewith he proceeded to erect before him the cross hilt
of poor Abenali's sword, and to vow thereupon that the first spoil
and the first ransom, that it should please the saints to send him,
should be entirely spent in masses for the soul of Martin Fulford.
This tribute apparently stilled both grief and remorse, for looking
up at the grotesque figure of Randall, he said, "Methought they told
me, master son, that you were in the right quarters for beads and
masses and all that gear--a varlet of Master Butcher-Cardinal's, or
the like--but mayhap 'twas part of your fooling."

"Not so," replied Randall.  "'Tis to the Cardinal that I belong,"
holding out his sleeve, where the scarlet hat was neatly worked,
"and I'll brook no word against his honour."

"Ho! ho!  Maybe you looked to have the hat on your own head," quoth
Fulford, waxing familiar, "if your master comes to be Pope after his
own reckoning.  Why, I've known a Cardinal get the scarlet because
an ape had danced on the roof with him in his arms!"

"You forget!  I'm a wedded man," said Randall, who certainly, in
private life, had much less of the buffoon about him than his
father-in-law.

"Impedimentum again," whistled the knight.  "Put a halter round her
neck, and sell her for a pot of beer."

"I'd rather put a halter round my own neck for good and all," said
Hal, his face reddening; but among other accomplishments of his
position, he had learnt to keep his temper, however indignant he
felt.

"Well--she's a knight's daughter, and preferments will be plenty.
Thou'lt make me captain of the Pope's guard, fair son--there's no
post I should like better.  Or I might put up with an Italian
earldom or the like.  Honour would befit me quite as well as that
old fellow, Prosper Colonna; and the Badgers would well become the
Pope's scarlet and yellow liveries."

The Badgers, it appeared, were in camp not far from Gravelines,
whence the Emperor was watching the conference between his uncle-in-
law and his chief enemy; and thence Fulford, who had a good many
French acquaintance, having once served under Francis I., had come
over to see the sport.  Moreover, he contrived to attach himself to
the armourer's party, in a manner that either Alderman Headley
himself, or Tibble Steelman, would effectually have prevented; but
which Kit Smallbones had not sufficient moral weight to hinder, even
if he had had a greater dislike to being treated as a boon companion
by a knight who had seen the world, could appreciate good ale, and
tell all manner of tales of his experiences.

So the odd sort of kindred that the captain chose to claim with
Stephen Birkenholt was allowed, and in right of it, he was permitted
to sleep in the waggon; and thereupon his big raw-boned charger was
found sharing the fodder of the plump broad-backed cart horses,
while he himself, whenever sport was not going forward for him, or
work for the armourers, sat discussing with Kit the merits or
demerits of the liquors of all nations, either in their own yard or
in some of the numerous drinking booths that had sprung up around.

To no one was this arrangement so distasteful as to Quipsome Hal,
who felt himself in some sort the occasion of the intrusion, and yet
was quite unable to prevent it, while everything he said was treated
as a joke by his unwelcome father-in-law.  It was a coarse time, and
Wolsey's was not a refined or spiritual establishment, but it was
decorous, and Randall had such an affection and respect for the
innocence of his sister's young son, that he could not bear to have
him exposed to the company of one habituated to the licentiousness
of the mercenary soldier.  At first the jester hoped to remove the
lads from the danger, for the brief remainder of their stay, by
making double exertion to obtain places for them at any diversion
which might be going on when their day's work was ended, and of
these, of course, there was a wide choice, subordinate to the
magnificent masquing of kings and queens.  On the last midsummer
evening, while their majesties were taking leave of one another, a
company of strolling players were exhibiting in an extemporary
theatre, and here Hal incited both the youths to obtain seats.  The
drama was on one of the ordinary and frequent topics of that, as of
all other times, and the dumb show and gestures were far more
effective than the words, so that even those who did not understand
the language of the comedians, who seemed to be Italians, could
enter into it, especially as it was interspersed with very
expressive songs.

An old baron insists on betrothing his daughter and heiress to her
kinsman freshly knighted.  She is reluctant, weeps, and is
threatened, singing afterwards her despair (of course she really was
a black-eyed boy).  That song was followed by a still more
despairing one from the baron's squire, and a tender interview
between them followed.

Then came discovery, the baron descending as a thunderbolt, the
banishment of the squire, the lady driven at last to wed the young
knight, her weeping and bewailing herself under his ill-treatment,
which extended to pulling her about by the hair, the return of the
lover, notified by a song behind the scenes, a dangerously
affectionate meeting, interrupted by the husband, a fierce clashing
of swords, mutual slaughter by the two gentlemen, and the lady dying
of grief on the top of her lover.

Such was the argument of this tragedy, which Giles Headley
pronounced to be very dreary pastime, indeed he was amusing himself
with an exchange of comfits with a youth who sat next him all the
time--for he had found Stephen utterly deaf to aught but the
tragedy, following every gesture with eager eyes, lips quivering,
and eyes filling at the strains of the love songs, though they were
in their native Italian, of which he understood not a word.  He rose
up with a heavy groan when all was over, as if not yet disenchanted,
and hardly answered when his uncle spoke to him afterwards.  It was
to ask whether the Dragon party were to return at once to London, or
to accompany the Court to Gravelines, where, it had just been
announced, the King intended to pay a visit to his nephew, the
Emperor.

Neither Stephen nor Giles knew, but when they reached their own
quarters they found that Smallbones had received an intimation that
there might be jousts, and that the offices of the armourers would
be required.  He was very busy packing up his tools, but loudly
hilarious, and Sir John Fulford, with a flask of wine beside him,
was swaggering and shouting orders to the men as though he were the
head of the expedition.

Revelations come in strange ways.  Perhaps that Italian play might
be called Galeotto to Stephen Birkenholt.  It affected him all the
more because he was not distracted by the dialogue, but was only
powerfully touched by the music, and, in the gestures of the lovers,
felt all the force of sympathy.  It was to him like a kind of
prophetic mirror, revealing to him the true meaning of all he had
ever felt for Dennet Headley, and of his vexation and impatience at
seeing her bestowed upon a dull and indifferent lout like her
kinsman, who not only was not good enough for her, but did not even
love her, or accept her as anything but his title to the Dragon
court.  He now thrilled and tingled from head to foot with the
perceptions that all this meant love--love to Dennet; and in every
act of the drama he beheld only himself, Giles, and Dennet.
Watching at first with a sweet fascination, his feelings changed,
now to strong yearning, now to hot wrath, and then to horror and
dismay.  In his troubled sleep after the spectacle, he identified
himself with the lover, sang, wooed, and struggled in his person,
woke with a start of relief, to find Giles snoring safely beside
him, and the watch-dog on his chest instead of an expiring lady.  He
had not made unholy love to sweet Dennet, nor imperilled her good
name, nor slain his comrade.  Nor was she yet wedded to that oaf,
Giles!  But she would be in a few weeks, and then!  How was he to
brook the sight, chained as he was to the Dragon court--see Giles
lord it over her, and all of them, see her missing the love that was
burning for her elsewhere.  Stephen lost his boyhood on that
evening, and, though force of habit kept him like himself outwardly,
he never was alone, without feeling dazed, and torn in every
direction at once.



CHAPTER XXI.  SWORD OR SMITHY



"Darest thou be so valiant as to play the coward with thy indenture,
and to show it a fair pair of heels and run from it?"

SHAKESPEARE.

Tidings came forth on the parting from the French King that the
English Court was about to move to Gravelines to pay a visit to the
Emperor and his aunt, the Duchess of Savoy.  As it was hoped that
jousts might make part of the entertainment, the attendance of the
Dragon party was required.  Giles was unfeignedly delighted at this
extension of holiday, Stephen felt that it deferred the day--would
it be of strange joy or pain?--of standing face to face with Dennet;
and even Kit had come to tolerate foreign parts more with Sir John
Fulford to show him the way to the best Flemish ale!

The knight took upon himself the conduct of the Dragons.  He
understood how to lead them by routes where all provisions and ale
had not been consumed; and he knew how to swagger and threaten so as
to obtain the best of liquor and provisions at each kermesse--at
least so he said, though it might be doubted whether the Flemings
might not have been more willing to yield up their stores to Kit's
open, honest face and free hand.

However, Fulford seemed to consider himself one with the party; and
he beguiled the way by tales of the doings of the Badgers in Italy
and Savoy, which were listened to with avidity by the lads,
distracting Stephen from the pain at his heart, and filling both
with excitement.  They were to have the honour of seeing the Badgers
at Gravelines, where they were encamped outside the city to serve as
a guard to the great inclosure that was being made of canvas
stretched on the masts of ships to mark out the space for a great
banquet and dance.

The weather broke however just as Henry, his wife and his sister,
entered Gravelines; it rained pertinaciously, a tempestuous wind
blew down the erection, and as there was no time to set it up again,
the sports necessarily took place in the castle and town hall.
There was no occasion for the exercise of the armourer's craft, and
as Charles had forbidden the concourse of all save invited guests,
everything was comparatively quiet and dull, though the
entertainment was on the most liberal scale.  Lodgings were provided
in the city at the Emperor's expense, and wherever an Englishman was
quartered each night, the imperial officers brought a cast of fine
manchet bread, two great silver pots with wine, a pound of sugar,
white and yellow candles, and a torch.  As Randall said, "Charles
gave solid pudding where Francis gave empty praise"!

Smallbones and the two youths had very little to do, save to consume
these provisions and accept the hospitality freely offered to them
at the camp of the Badgers, where Smallbones and the Ancient of the
troop sat fraternising over big flagons of Flemish ale, which did
not visibly intoxicate the honest smith, but kept him in the dull
and drowsy state, which was his idea of the dolce far niente of a
holiday.  Meanwhile the two youths were made much of by the
warriors, Stephen's dexterity with the bow and back-sword were shown
off and lauded, Giles's strength was praised, and all manner of new
feats were taught them, all manner of stories told them; and the
shrinking of well-trained young citizens from these lawless me "full
of strange oaths and bearded like the pard," and some very
truculent-looking, had given way to judicious flattery, and to the
attractions of adventure and of a free life, where wealth and honour
awaited the bold.

Stephen was told that the gentleman in him was visible, that he
ought to disdain the flat cap and blue gown, that here was his
opportunity, and that among the Badgers he would soon be so rich,
famous, glorious, as to wonder that he had ever tolerated the greasy
mechanical life of a base burgher.  Respect to his oaths to his
master--Sir John laughed the scruple to scorn; nay, if he were so
tender, he could buy his absolution the first time he had his pouch
full of gold.

"What shall I do?" was the cry of Stephen's heart.  "My honour and
my oath.  They bind me.  SHE would weep.  My master would deem me
ungrateful, Ambrose break his heart.  And yet who knows but I should
do worse if I stayed, I shall break my own heart if I do.  I shall
not see--I may forget.  No, no, never! but at least I shall never
know the moment when the lubber takes the jewel he knows not how to
prize!  Marches--sieges--there shall I quell this wild beating!  I
may die there.  At least they will allay this present frenzy of my
blood."

And he listened when Fulford and Will Marden, a young English man-
at-arms with whom he had made friends, concerted how he should meet
them at an inn--the sign of the Seven Stars--in Gravelines, and
there exchange his prentice's garb for the buff coat and corslet of
a Badger, with the Austrian black and yellow scarf.  He listened,
but he had not promised.  The sense of duty to his master, the
honour to his word, always recurred like "first thoughts," though
the longing to escape, the restlessness of hopeless love, the
youthful eagerness for adventure and freedom, swept it aside again
and again.

He had not seen his uncle since the evening of the comedy, for Hal
had travelled in the Cardinal's suite, and the amusements being all
within doors, jesters were much in request, as indeed Charles V. was
curious in fools, and generally had at least three in attendance.
Stephen, moreover, always shrank from his uncle when acting
professionally.  He had learnt to love and esteem the man during his
troubles, but this only rendered the sight of his buffoonery more
distressing, and as Randall had not provided himself with his home
suit, they were the more cut off from one another.  Thus there was
all the less to counteract or show the fallacy of Fulford's
recruiting blandishments.

The day had come on the evening of which Stephen was to meet Fulford
and Marden at the Seven Stars and give them his final answer, in
time to allow of their smuggling him out of the city, and sending
him away into the country, since Smallbones would certainly suspect
him to be in the camp, and as he was still an apprentice, it was
possible, though not probable, that the town magistrates might be
incited to make search on inquiry, as they were very jealous of the
luring away of their apprentices by the Free Companies, and moreover
his uncle might move the Cardinal and the King to cause measures to
be taken for his recovery.

Ill at ease, Stephen wandered away from the hostel where Smallbones
was entertaining his friend, the Ancient.  He had not gone far down
the street when a familiar figure met his eye, no other than that of
Lucas Hansen, his brother's old master, walking along with a pack on
his back.  Grown as Stephen was, the old man's recognition was as
rapid as his own, and there was a clasp of the hand, an exchange of
greeting, while Lucas eagerly asked after his dear pupil, Ambrose.

"Come in hither, and we can speak more at ease," said Lucas, leading
the way up the common staircase of a tall house, whose upper stories
overhung the street.  Up and up, Lucas led the way to a room in the
high peaked roof, looking out at the back.  Here Stephen recognised
a press, but it was not at work, only a young friar was sitting
there engaged in sewing up sheets so as to form a pamphlet.  Lucas
spoke to him in Flemish to explain his own return with the English
prentice.

"Dost thou dwell here, sir?" asked Stephen.  "I thought Rotterdam
was thine home."

"Yea," said Lucas, "so it be, but I am sojourning here to aid in
bearing about the seed of the Gospel, for which I walk through these
lands of ours.  But tell me of thy brother, and of the little
Moorish maiden?"

Stephen replied with an account of both Ambrose and Aldonza, and
likewise of Tibble Steelman, explaining how ill the last had been in
the winter, and that therefore he could not be with the party.

"I would I had a token to send him," said Lucas; "but I have nought
here that is not either in the Dutch or the French, and neither of
those tongues doth he understand.  But thy brother, the good
Ambrose, can read the Dutch.  Wilt thou carry him from me this fresh
tractate, showing how many there be that make light of the Apostle
Paul's words not to do evil that good may come?"

Stephen had been hearing rather listlessly, thinking how little the
good man suspected how doubtful it was that he should bear messages
to Ambrose.  Now, on that sore spot in his conscience, that sentence
darted like an arrow, the shaft finding "mark the archer little
meant," and with a start, not lost on Lucas, he exclaimed "Saith the
holy Saint Paul that?"

"Assuredly, my son.  Brother Cornelis, who is one whose eyes have
been opened, can show you the very words, if thou hast any Latin."

Perhaps to gain time, Stephen assented, and the young friar, with a
somewhat inquisitive look, presently brought him the sentence "Et
non faciamus mala ut veniant bona."

Stephen's Latin was not very fresh, and he hardly comprehended the
words, but he stood gazing with a frown of distress on his brow,
which made Lucas say, "My son, thou art sorely bestead.  Is there
aught in which a plain old man can help thee, for thy brother's
sake?  Speak freely.  Brother Cornelis knows not a word of English.
Dost thou owe aught to any man?"

"Nay, nay--not that," said Stephen, drawn in his trouble and
perplexity to open his heart to this incongruous confidant, "but,
sir, sir, which be the worst, to break my pledge to my master, or to
run into a trial which--which will last from day to day, and may be
too much for me--yea, and for another--at last?"

The colour, the trembling of limb, the passion of voice, revealed
enough to Lucas to make him say, in the voice of one who, dried up
as he was, had once proved the trial, "'Tis love, thou wouldst say?"

"Ay, sir," said Stephen, turning away, but in another moment
bursting forth, "I love my master's daughter, and she is to wed her
cousin, who takes her as her father's chattel!  I wist not why the
world had grown dark to me till I saw a comedy at Ardres, where, as
in a mirror, 'twas all set forth--yea, and how love was too strong
for him and for her, and how shame and death came thereof."

"Those players are good for nought but to wake the passions!"
muttered Lucas.

"Nay, methought they warned me," said Stephen.  "For, sir,"--he hid
his burning face in his hands as he leant on the back of a chair--"I
wot that she has ever liked me better, far better than him.  And
scarce a night have I closed an eye without dreaming it all, and
finding myself bringing evil on her, till I deemed 'twere better I
never saw her more, and left her to think of me as a forsworn
runagate rather than see her wedded only to be flouted--and maybe--
do worse."

"Poor lad!" said Lucas; "and what wouldst thou do?"

"I have not pledged myself--but I said I would consider of--service
among Fulford's troop," faltered Stephen.

"Among those ruffians--godless, lawless men!" exclaimed Lucas.

"Yea, I know what you would say," returned Stephen, "but they are
brave men, better than you deem, sir."

"Were they angels or saints," said Lucas, rallying his forces, "thou
hast no right to join them.  Thine oath fetters thee.  Thou hast no
right to break it and do a sure and certain evil to avoid one that
may never befall!  How knowst thou how it may be?  Nay, if the trial
seem to thee over great, thine apprenticeship will soon be at an
end."

"Not for two years"

"Or thy master, if thou spakest the whole truth, would transfer
thine indentures.  He is a good man, and if it be as thou sayest,
would not see his child tried too sorely.  God will make a way for
the tempted to escape.  They need not take the devil's way."

"Sir," said Stephen, lifting up his head, "I thank you.  Thus was
what I needed.  I will tell Sir John Fulford that I ought never to
have heeded him."

"Must thou see him again?"

"I must.  I am to give him his answer at the Seven Stars.  But fear
not me, Master Lucas, he shall not lead me away."  And Stephen took
a grateful leave of the little Dutchman, and charged himself with
more messages for Ambrose and Tibble than his overburdened spirit
was likely to retain.

Lucas went down the stairs with him, and as a sudden thought, said
at the foot of them, "'Tis at the Seven Stars thou meetest this
knight.  Take an old man's counsel.  Taste no liquor there."

"I am no ale bibber," said Stephen.

"Nay, I deemed thee none--but heed my words--captains of
landsknechts in kermesses are scarce to be trusted.  Taste not."

Stephen gave a sort of laugh at the precaution, and shook himself
loose.  It was still an hour to the time of meeting, and the Ave-
bell was ringing.  A church door stood open, and for the first time
since he had been at Gravelines he felt that there would be the calm
he needed to adjust the conflict of his spirits, and comprehend the
new situation, or rather the recurrence to the old one.  He seemed
to have recovered his former self, and to be able to perceive that
things might go on as before, and his heart really leapt at finding
he might return to the sight of Dennet and Ambrose and all he loved.

His wishes were really that way; and Fulford's allurements had
become very shadowy when he made his way to the Seven Stars, whose
vine-covered window allowed many loud voices and fumes of beer and
wine to escape into the summer evening air.

The room was perhaps cleaner than an English one would have been,
but it was reeking with heat and odours, and the forest-bred youth
was unwilling to enter, but Fulford and two or three Badgers greeted
him noisily and called on him to partake of the supper they had
ready prepared.

"No, sir knight, I thank you," said Stephen.  "I am bound for my
quarters, I came but to thank you for your goodness to me, and to
bid you farewell."

"And how as to thy pledge to join us, young man?" demanded Fulford
sternly.

"I gave no pledge," said Stephen.  "I said I would consider of it."

"Faint-hearted! ha! ha!" and the English Badgers translated the word
to the Germans, and set them shouting with derision.

"I am not faint-hearted," said Stephen; "but I will not break mine
oath to my master."

"And thine oath to me?  Ha!" said Fulford.

"I sware you no oath, I gave you no word," said Stephen.

"Ha!  Thou darest give me the lie, base prentice.  Take that!"

And therewith he struck Stephen a crushing blow on the head, which
felled him to the ground.  The host and all the company, used to
pot-house quarrels, and perhaps playing into his hands, took little
heed; Stephen was dragged insensible into another room, and there
the Badgers began hastily to divest him of his prentice's gown, and
draw his arms into a buff coat.

Fulford had really been struck with his bravery, and knew besides
that his skill in the armourer's craft would be valuable, so that it
had been determined beforehand that he should--by fair means or
foul--leave the Seven Stars a Badger.

"By all the powers of hell, you have struck too hard, sir.  He is
sped," said Marden anxiously.

"Ass! tut!" said Fulford.  "Only enough to daze him till he be safe
in our quarters--and for that the sooner the better.  Here, call
Anton to take his heels.  We'll get him forth now as a fellow of our
own."

"Hark!  What's that?"

"Gentlemen," said the host hurrying in, "here be some of the
gentlemen of the English Cardinal, calling for a nephew of one of
them, who they say is in this house."

With an imprecation, Fulford denied all connection with gentlemen of
the Cardinal; but there was evidently an invasion, and in another
moment, several powerful-looking men in the crimson and black velvet
of Wolsey's train had forced their way into the chamber, and the
foremost, seeing Stephen's condition at a glance, exclaimed loudly,
"Thou villain! traitor! kidnapper!  This is thy work."

"Ha! ha!" shouted Fulford, "whom have we here?  The Cardinal's fool
a masquing!  Treat us to a caper, quipsome sir?"

"I'm more like to treat you to the gyves," returned Randall.  "Away
with you!  The watch are at hand.  Were it not for my wife's sake,
they should bear you off to the city jail; the Emperor should know
how you fill your ranks."

It was quite true.  The city guard were entering at the street door,
and the host hurried Fulford and his men, swearing and raging, out
at a back door provided for such emergencies.  Stephen was beginning
to recover by this time.  His uncle knelt down, took his head on his
shoulder, and Lucas washed off the blood and administered a drop of
wine.  His first words were:

"Was it Giles?  Where is she?"

"Still going over the play!" thought Lucas.  "Nay, nay, lad.  'Twas
one of the soldiers who played thee this scurvy trick!  All's well
now.  Thou wilt soon be able to quit this place."

"I remember now," said Stephen, "Sir John said I gave him the lie
when I said I had given no pledge.  But I had not!"

"Thou hast been a brave fellow, and better broken head than broken
troth," said his uncle.

"But how came you here," asked Stephen.  "In the nick of time?"

It was explained that Lucas, not doubting Stephen's resolution, but
quite aware of the tricks of landsknecht captains with promising
recruits in view, had gone first in search of Smallbones, but had
found him and the Ancient so deeply engaged in potations from the
liberal supply of the Emperor to all English guests, that there was
no getting him apart, and he was too much muddled to comprehend if
he could have been spoken with.

Lucas then, in desperation, betook himself to the convent where
Wolsey was magnificently lodged.  Ill May Day had made him, as well
as others, well acquainted with the relationship between Stephen and
Randall, though he was not aware of the further connection with
Fulford.  He hoped, even if unable to see Randall, to obtain help on
behalf of an English lad in danger, and happily he arrived at a
moment when State affairs were going on, and Randall was refreshing
himself by a stroll in the cloister.  When Lucas had made him
understand the situation, his dismay was only equalled by his
promptitude.  He easily obtained the loan of one of the splendid
suits of scarlet and crimson, guarded with black velvet a hand
broad, which were worn by the Cardinal's secular attendants--for he
was well known by this time in the household to be very far from an
absolute fool, and indeed had done many a good turn to his comrades.
Several of the gentlemen, indignant at the threatened outrage on a
young Englishman, and esteeming the craftsmen of the Dragon,
volunteered to accompany him, and others warned the watch.

There was some difficulty still, for the burgher guards, coming up
puffing and blowing, wanted to carry off the victim and keep him in
ward to give evidence against the mercenaries, whom they regarded as
a sort of wolves, so that even the Emperor never durst quarter them
within one of the cities.  The drawn swords of Randall's friends
however settled that matter, and Stephen, though still dizzy, was
able to walk.  Thus leaning on his uncle, he was escorted back to
the hostel.

"The villain!" the jester said on the way, "I mistrusted him, but I
never thought he would have abused our kindred in this fashion.  I
would fain have come down to look after thee, nevvy, but these kings
and queens are troublesome folk.  The Emperor--he is a pale, shame-
faced, solemn lad.  Maybe he museth, but he had scarce a word to say
for himself.  Our Hal tried clapping on the shoulder, calling him
fair coz, and the like, in his hearty fashion.  Behold, what doth he
but turn round with such a look about the long lip of him as my Lord
of Buckingham might have if his scullion made free with him.  His
aunt, the Duchess of Savoy, is a merry dame, and a wise!  She and
our King can talk by the ell, but as for the Emperor, he speaketh to
none willingly save Queen Katharine, who is of his own stiff Spanish
humour, and he hath eyes for none save Queen Mary, who would have
been his empress had high folk held to their word.  And with so
tongue-tied a host, and the rain without, what had the poor things
to do by way of disporting themselves with but a show of fools.
I've had to go through every trick and quip I learnt when I was with
old Nat Fire-eater.  And I'm stiffer in the joints and weightier in
the heft than I was in those days when I slept in the fields, and
fasted more than ever Holy Church meant.  But, heigh ho!  I ought to
be supple enough after the practice of these three days.  Moreover,
if it could loose a fool's tongue to have a king and queen for
interpreters, I had them--for there were our Harry and Moll catching
at every gibe as fast as my brain could hatch it, and rendering it
into French as best thy might, carping and quibbling the while
underhand at one another's renderings, and the Emperor sitting by in
his black velvet, smiling about as much as a felon at the hangman's
jests.  All his poor fools moreover, and the King's own, ready to
gnaw their baubles for envy!  That was the only sport I had!  I'm
wearier than if I'd been plying Smallbones' biggest hammer.  The
worst of it is that my Lord Cardinal is to stay behind and go on to
Bruges as ambassador, and I with him, so thou must bear my greetings
to thy naunt, and tell her I'm keeping from picking up a word of
French or Flemish lest this same Charles should take a fancy to me
and ask me of my master, who would give away his own head to get the
Pope's fool's cap."

"Wer da?  Qui va la?" asked a voice, and the summer twilight
revealed two figures with cloaks held high and drooping Spanish
hats; one of whom, a slender, youthful figure, so far as could be
seen under his cloak, made inquiries, first in Flemish, then in
French, as to what ailed the youth.  Lucas replied in the former
tongue, and one of the Englishmen could speak French.  The gentleman
seemed much concerned, asked if the watch had been at hand, and
desired Lucas to assure the young Englishman that the Emperor would
be much distressed at the tidings, asked where he was lodged, and
passed on.

"Ah ha!" muttered the jester, "if my ears deceive me now, I'll never
trust them again!  Mynheer Charles knows a few more tricks than he
is fain to show off in royal company.  Come on, Stevie!  I'll see
thee to thy bed.  Old Kit is too far gone to ask after thee.  In
sooth, I trow that my sweet father-in-law set his Ancient to nail
him to the wine pot.  And Master Giles I saw last with some of the
grooms.  I said nought to him, for I trow thou wouldst not have him
know thy plight!  I'll be with thee in the morning ere thou partest,
if kings, queens, and cardinals roar themselves hoarse for the
Quipsome."

With this promise Hal Randall bestowed his still dulled and half-
stunned nephew carefully on the pallet provided by the care of the
purveyors.  Stephen slept dreamily at first, then soundly, and woke
at the sound of the bells of Gravelines to the sense that a great
crisis in his life was over, a strange wild dream of evil dispelled,
and that he was to go home to see, hear, and act as he could, with a
heartache indeed, but with the resolve to do his best as a true and
honest man.

Smallbones was already afoot--for the start for Calais was to be
made on that very day.  The smith was fully himself again, and was
bawling for his subordinates, who had followed his example in
indulging in the good cheer, and did not carry it off so easily.
Giles, rather silent and surly, was out of bed, shouting answers to
Smallbones, and calling on Stephen to truss his points.  He was in a
mood not easy to understand, he would hardly speak, and never
noticed the marks of the fray on Stephen's temple--only half hidden
by the dark curly hair.  This was of course a relief, but Stephen
could not help suspecting that he had been last night engaged in
some revel about which he desired no inquiries.

Randall came just as the operation was completed.  He was in a good
deal of haste, having to restore the groom's dress he wore by the
time the owner had finished the morning toilet of the Lord
Cardinal's palfreys.  He could not wait to inquire how Stephen had
contrived to fall into the hands of Fulford, his chief business
being to put under safe charge a bag of coins, the largesse from the
various princes and nobles whom he had diverted--ducats, crowns,
dollars, and angels all jingling together--to be bestowed wherever
Perronel kept her store, a matter which Hal was content not to know,
though the pair cherished a hope some day to retire on it from
fooling.

"Thou art a good lad, Steve," said Hal.  "I'm right glad thou
leavest this father of mine behind thee.  I would not see thee such
as he--no, not for all the gold we saw on the Frenchmen's backs."

This was the jester's farewell, but it was some time before the
waggon was under way, for the carter and one of the smiths were
missing, and were only at noon found in an alehouse, both very far
gone in liquor, and one with a black eye.  Kit discoursed on
sobriety in the most edifying manner, as at last he drove heavily
along the street, almost the last in the baggage train of the king
and queens--but still in time to be so included in it so as to save
all difficulty at the gates.  It was, however, very late in the
evening when they reached Calais, so that darkness was coming on as
they waited their turn at the drawbridge, with a cart full of
scullions and pots and pans before them, and a waggon-load of tents
behind.  The warders in charge of the gateway had orders to count
over all whom they admitted, so that no unauthorised person might
enter that much-valued fortress.  When at length the waggon rolled
forward into the shadow of the great towered gateway on the outer
side of the moat, the demand was made, who was there?  Giles had
always insisted, as leader of the party, on making reply to such
questions, and Smallbones waited for his answer, but none was
forthcoming.  Therefore Kit shouted in reply, "Alderman Headley's
wain and armourers.  Two journeymen, one prentice, two smiths, two
waggoners."

"Seven!" rejoined the warder.  "One--two--three--four--five.  Ha!
your company seems to be lacking."

"Giles must have ridden on," suggested Stephen, while Kit, growling
angrily, called on the lazy fellow, Will Wherry, to wake and show
himself.  But the officials were greatly hurried, and as long as no
dangerous person got into Calais, it mattered little to them who
might be left outside, so they hurried on the waggon into the narrow
street.

It was well that it was a summer night, for lodgings there were
none.  Every hostel was full and all the houses besides.  The
earlier comers assured Kit that it was of no use to try to go on.
The streets up to the wharf were choked, and he might think himself
lucky to have his waggon to sleep in.  But the horses!  And food?
However, there was one comfort--English tongues answered, if it was
only with denials.

Kit's store of travelling money was at a low ebb, and it was nearly
exhausted by the time, at an exorbitant price, he had managed to get
a little hay and water for the horses, and a couple of loaves and a
haunch of bacon among the five hungry men.  They were quite content
to believe that Master Giles had ridden on before and secured better
quarters and viands, nor could they much regret the absence of Will
Wherry's wide mouth.

Kit called Stephen to council in the morning.  His funds would not
permit waiting for the missing ones, if he were to bring home any
reasonable proportion of gain to his master.  He believed that
Master Headley would by no means risk the whole party loitering at
Calais, when it was highly probable that Giles might have joined
some of the other travellers, and embarked by himself.

After all, Kit's store had to be well-nigh expended before the
horses, waggon, and all, could find means to encounter the miseries
of the transit to Dover.  Then, glad as he was to be on his native
soil, his spirits sank lower and lower as the waggon creaked on
under the hot sun towards London.  He had actually brought home only
four marks to make over to his master; and although he could show a
considerable score against the King and various nobles, these debts
were not apt to be promptly discharged, and what was worse, two
members of his party and one horse were missing.  He little knew how
narrow an escape he had had of losing a third!



CHAPTER XXII.  AN INVASION



"What shall be the maiden's fate?
Who shall be the maiden's mate?"

SCOTT.

No Giles Headley appeared to greet the travellers, though Kit
Smallbones had halted at Canterbury, to pour out entreaties to St.
Thomas, and the vow of a steel and gilt reliquary of his best
workmanship to contain the old shoe, which a few years previously
had so much disgusted Erasmus and his companion.

Poor old fellow, he was too much crest-fallen thoroughly to enjoy
even the gladness of his little children; and his wife made no
secret of her previous conviction that he was too dunderheaded not
to run into some coil, when she was not there to look after him.
The alderman was more merciful.  Since there had been no invasion
from Salisbury, he had regretted the not having gone himself to
Ardres, and he knew pretty well that Kit's power lay more in his
arms than in his brain.  He did not wonder at the small gain, nor at
the having lost sight of the young man, and confidently expected the
lost ones soon to appear.

As to Dennet, her eyes shone quietly, and she took upon herself to
send down to let Mistress Randall know of her nephew's return, and
invite her to supper to hear the story of his doings.  The girl did
not look at all like a maiden uneasy about her lost lover, but much
more like one enjoying for the moment the immunity from a kind of
burthen; and, as she smiled, called for Stephen's help in her little
arrangements, and treated him in the friendly manner of old times,
he could not but wonder at the panic that had overpowered him for a
time like a fever of the mind.

There was plenty to speak of in the glories of the Field of the
Cloth of Gold, and the transactions with the knights and nobles; and
Stephen held his peace as to his adventure, but Dennet's eyes were
sharper than Kit's.  She spied the remains of the bruise under his
black curly hair; and while her father and Tib were unravelling the
accounts from Kit's brain and tally-sticks, she got the youth out
into the gallery, and observed, "So thou hast a broken head.  See
here are grandmother's lily-leaves in strong waters.  Let me lay one
on for thee.  There, sit down on the step, then I can reach."

"'Tis well nigh whole now, sweet mistress," said Stephen, complying
however, for it was too sweet to have those little fingers busy
about him, for the offer to be declined.

"How gatst thou the blow?" asked Dennet.  "Was it at single-stick?
Come, thou mayst tell me.  'Twas in standing up for some one."

"Nay, mistress, I would it had been."

"Thou hast been in trouble," she said, leaning on the baluster above
him.  "Or did ill men set on thee?"

"That's the nearest guess," said Stephen.  "'Twas that tall father
of mine aunt's, the fellow that came here for armour, and bought
poor Master Michael's sword."

"And sliced the apple on thine hand.  Ay?"

"He would have me for one of his Badgers."

"Thee!  Stephen!"  It was a cry of pain as well as horror.

"Yea, mistress; and when I refused, the fellow dealt me a blow, and
laid me down senseless, to bear me off willy nilly, but that good
old Lucas Hansen brought mine uncle to mine aid--"

Dennet clasped her hands.  "O Stephen, Stephen!  Now I know how good
the Lord is.  Wot ye, I asked of Tibble to take me daily to St.
Faith's to crave of good St. Julian to have you all in his keeping,
and saith he on the way, 'Methinks, mistress, our dear Lord would
hear you if you spake to Him direct, with no go-between.'  I did as
he bade me, Stephen, I went to the high Altar, and prayed there, and
Tibble went with me, and lo, now, He hath brought you back safe.  We
will have a mass of thanksgiving on the very morn."

Stephen's heart could not but bound, for it was plain enough for
whom the chief force of these prayers had been offered.

"Sweet mistress," he said, "they have availed me indeed.  Certes,
they warded me in the time of sore trial and temptation."

"Nay," said Dennet, "thou COULDST not have longed to go away from
hence with those ill men who live by slaying and plundering?"

The present temptation was to say that he had doubted whether this
course would not have been for the best both for himself and for
her; but he recollected that Giles might be at the gate, and if so,
he should feel as if he had rather have bitten out his tongue than
have let Dennet know the state of the case, so he only answered -

"There be sorer temptations in the world for us poor rogues than
little home-biding house crickets like thee wot of, mistress.  Well
that ye can pray for us without knowing all!"

Stephen had never consciously come so near love-making, and his
honest face was all one burning glow with the suppressed feeling,
while Dennet lingered till the curfew warned them of the lateness of
the hour, both with a strange sense of undefined pleasure in the
being together in the summer twilight.

Day after day passed on with no news of Giles or Will Wherry.  The
alderman grew uneasy, and sent Stephen to ask his brother to write
to Randall, or to some one else in Wolsey's suite, to make inquiries
at Bruges.  But Ambrose was found to have gone abroad in the train
of Sir Thomas More, and nothing was heard till their return six
weeks later, when Ambrose brought home a small packet which had been
conveyed to him through one of the Emperor's suite.  It was tied up
with a long tough pale wisp of hair, evidently from the mane or tail
of some Flemish horse, and was addressed, "To Master Ambrose
Birkenholt, menial clerk to the most worshipful Sir Thomas More,
Knight, Under Sheriff of the City of London.  These greeting--"

Within, when Ambrose could open the missive, was another small
parcel, and a piece of brown coarse paper, on which was scrawled -

"Good Ambrose Birkenholt,--I pray thee to stand my friend, and let
all know whom it may concern, that when this same billet comes to
hand, I shall be far on the march to High Germany, with a company of
lusty fellows in the Emperor's service.  They be commanded by the
good knight, Sir John Fulford.

"If thou canst send tidings to my mother, bid her keep her heart up,
for I shall come back a captain, full of wealth and honour, and that
will be better than hammering for life--or being wedded against mine
own will.  There never was troth plight between my master's daughter
and me, and my time is over, so I be quit with them, and I thank my
master for his goodness.  They shall all hear of me some of these
days.  Will Wherry is my groom, and commends him to his mother.  And
so, commending thee and all the rest to Our Lady and the saints,

"Thine to command,

"GILES HEADLEY,

"Man-at-Arms in the Honourable Company of Sir John Fulford, Knight."


On a separate strip was written -


"Give this packet to the little Moorish maid, and tell her that I
will bring her better by and by, and mayhap make her a knight's
lady; but on thy life, say nought to any other."


It was out now!  Ambrose's head was more in Sir Thomas's books than
in real life at all times, or he would long ago have inferred
something--from the jackdaw's favourite phrase--from Giles's modes
of haunting his steps, and making him the bearer of small tokens--an
orange, a simnel cake, a bag of walnuts or almonds to Mistress
Aldonza, and of the smiles, blushes, and thanks with which she
greeted them.  Nay, had she not burst into tears and entreated to be
spared when Lady More wanted to make a match between her and the big
porter, and had not her distress led Mistress Margaret to appeal to
her father, who had said he should as soon think of wedding the
silver-footed Thetis to Polyphemus.  "Tilley valley!  Master More,"
the lady had answered, "will all your fine pagan gods hinder the
wench from starving on earth, and leading apes in hell."

Margaret had answered that Aldonza should never do the first, and
Sir Thomas had gravely said that he thought those black eyes would
lead many a man on earth before they came to the latter fate.

Ambrose hid the parcel for her deep in his bosom before he asked
permission of his master to go to the Dragon court with the rest of
the tidings.

"He always was an unmannerly cub," said Master Headley, as he read
the letter.  "Well, I've done my best to make a silk purse of a
sow's ear!  I've done my duty by poor Robert's son, and if he will
be such a fool as to run after blood and wounds, I have no more to
say!  Though 'tis pity of the old name!  Ha! what's this?  'Wedded
against my will--no troth plight.'  Forsooth, I thought my young
master was mighty slack.  He hath some other matter in his mind,
hath he?  Run into some coil mayhap with a beggar wench!  Well, we
need not be beholden to him.  Ha, Dennet, my maid!"

Dennet screwed up her little mouth, and looked very demure, but she
twinkled her bright eyes, and said, "My heart will not break, sir; I
am in no haste to be wed."

Her father pinched her cheek and said she was a silly wench; but
perhaps he marked the dancing step with which the young mistress
went about her household cares, and how she was singing to herself
songs that certainly were not "Willow! willow!"

Ambrose had no scruple in delivering to Aldonza the message and
token, when he overtook her on the stairs of the house at Chelsea,
carrying up a lapful of roses to the still-room, where Dame Alice
More was rejoicing in setting her step-daughters to housewifely
tasks.

There came a wonderful illumination and agitation over the girl's
usually impassive features, giving all that they needed to make them
surpassingly beautiful.

"Woe is me!" was, however, her first exclamation.  "That he should
have given up all for me!  Oh! if I had thought it!"  But while she
spoke as if she were shocked and appalled, her eyes belied her
words.  They shone with the first absolute certainty of love, and
there was no realising as yet the years of silent waiting and
anxiety that must go by, nay, perhaps an entire lifetime of
uncertainty of her lover's truth or untruth, life or death.

Dame Alice called her, and in a rambling, maundering way, charged
her with loitering and gadding with the young men; and Margaret saw
by her colour and by her eyes that some strange thing had happened
to her.  Margaret had, perhaps, some intuition; for was not her
heart very tender towards a certain young barrister by name Roper
whom her father doubted as yet, because of his Lutheran
inclinations.  By and by she discovered that she needed Aldonza to
comb out her long dark hair, and ere long, she had heard all the
tale of the youth cured by the girl's father, and all his gifts, and
how Aldonza deemed him too great and too good for her (poor Giles!)
though she knew she should never do more than look up to him with
love and gratitude from afar.  And she never so much as dreamt that
he would cast an eye on her save in kindness.  Oh yes, she knew what
he had taught the daw to say, but then she was a child, she durst
not deem it more.  And Margaret More was more kind and eager than
worldly wise, and she encouraged Aldonza to watch and wait, promised
protection from all enforced suits and suitors, and gave assurances
of shelter as her own attendant as long as the girl should need it.

Master Headley, with some sighing and groaning, applied himself to
write to the mother at Salisbury what had become of her son; but he
had only spent one evening over the trying task, when just as the
supper bell was ringing, with Master Hope and his wife as guests,
there were horses' feet in the court, and Master Tiptoff appeared,
with a servant on another horse, which carried besides a figure in
camlet, on a pillion.  No sooner was this same figure lifted from
her steed and set down on the steps, while the master of the house
and his daughter came out to greet her, than she began, "Master
Alderman Headley, I am here to know what you have done with my poor
son!"

"Alack, good cousin!"

"Alack me no alacks," she interrupted, holding up her riding rod.
"I'll have no dissembling, there hath been enough of that, Giles
Headley.  Thou hast sold him, soul and body, to one of yon cruel,
bloodthirsty plundering, burning captains, that the poor child may
be slain and murthered!  Is this the fair promises you made to his
father--wiling him away from his poor mother, a widow, with talking
of teaching him the craft, and giving him your daughter!  My son,
Tiptoff here, told me the spousal was delayed and delayed, and he
doubted whether it would ever come off, but I thought not of this
sending him beyond seas, to make merchandise of him.  And you call
yourself an alderman!  The gown should be stript off the back of
you, and shall be, if there be any justice in London for a widow
woman."

"Nay, cousin, you have heard some strange tale," said Master
Headley, who, much as he would have dreaded the attack beforehand,
faced it the more calmly and manfully because the accusation was so
outrageous.

"Ay, so I told her," began her son-in-law, "but she hath been
neither to have nor to hold since the--"

"And how should I be to have or to hold by a nincompoop like thee,"
she said, turning round on him, "that would have me sit down and be
content forsooth, when mine only son is kidnapped to be sold to the
Turks or to work in the galleys, for aught I know."

"Mistress!" here Master Hope's voice came in, "I would counsel you
to speak less loud, and hear before you accuse.  We of the City of
London know Master Alderman Headley too well to hear him railed
against."

"Ah! you're all of a piece," she began; but by this time Master
Tiptoff had managed at least to get her into the hall, and had
exchanged words enough with the alderman to assure himself that
there was an explanation, nay, that there was a letter from Giles
himself.  This the indignant mother presently was made to
understand--and as the alderman had borrowed the letter in order to
copy it for her, it was given to her.  She could not read, and would
trust no one but her son-in-law to read it to her.  "Yea, you have
it very pat," she said, "but how am I to be assured 'tis not all
writ here to hoodwink a poor woman like me."

"'Tis Giles's hand," averred Tiptoff.

"And if you will," added the alderman, with wonderful patience, "to-
morrow you may speak with the youth who received it.  Come, sit down
and sup with us, and then you shall learn from Smallbones how this
mischance befel, all from my sending two young heads together, and
one who, though a good fellow, could not hold all in rule."

"Ay--you've your reasons for anything," she muttered, but being both
weary and hungry, she consented to eat and drink, while Tiptoff, who
was evidently ashamed of her violence, and anxious to excuse it,
managed to explain that a report had been picked up at Romsey, by a
bare-footed friar from Salisbury, that young Giles Headley had been
seen at Ghent by one of the servants of a wool merchant, riding with
a troop of Free Companions in the Emperor's service.  All the rest
was deduced from this intelligence by the dame's own imagination.

After supper she was invited to interrogate Kit and Stephen, and her
grief and anxiety found vent in fierce scolding at the misrule which
had permitted such a villain as Fulford to be haunting and tempting
poor fatherless lads.  Master Headley had reproached poor Kit for
the same thing, but he could only represent that Giles, being a
freeman, was no longer under his authority.  However, she stormed
on, being absolutely convinced that her son's evasion was every
one's fault but his own.  Now it was the alderman for misusing him,
overtasking the poor child, and deferring the marriage, now it was
that little pert poppet, Dennet, who had flouted him, now it was the
bad company he had been led into--the poor babe who had been bred to
godly ways.

The alderman was really sorry for her, and felt himself to blame so
far as that he had shifted the guidance of the expedition to such an
insufficient head as poor Smallbones, so he let her rail on as much
as she would, till the storm exhausted itself, and she settled into
the trust that Giles would soon grow weary and return.  The good man
felt bound to show her all hospitality, and the civilities to
country cousins were in proportion to the rarity of their visits.
So Mrs. Headley stayed on after Tiptoff's return to Salisbury, and
had the best view feasible of all the pageants and diversions of
autumn.  She saw some magnificent processions of clergy, she was
welcomed at a civic banquet and drank of the loving cup, and she
beheld the Lord Mayor's Show in all its picturesque glory of
emblazoned barges on the river.  In fact, she found the position of
denizen of an alderman's household so very agreeable that she did
her best to make it a permanency.  Nay, Dennet soon found that she
considered herself to be waiting there and keeping guard till her
son's return should establish her there, and that she viewed the
girl already as a daughter--for which Dennet was by no means obliged
to her!  She lavished counsel on her hostess, found fault with the
maidens, criticised the cookery, walked into the kitchen and still-
room with assistance and directions, and even made a strong effort
to possess herself of the keys.

It must be confessed that Dennet was saucy!  It was her weapon of
self-defence, and she considered herself insulted in her own house.

There she stood, exalted on a tall pair of pattens before the stout
oaken table in the kitchen where a glowing fire burned; pewter, red
and yellow earthenware, and clean scrubbed trenchers made a goodly
show, a couple of men-cooks and twice as many scullions obeyed her
behests--only the superior of the two first ever daring to argue a
point with her.  There she stood, in her white apron, with sleeves
turned up, daintily compounding her mincemeat for Christmas, when in
stalked Mrs. Headley to offer her counsel and aid--but this was lost
in a volley of barking from the long-backed, bandy-legged, turnspit
dog, which was awaiting its turn at the wheel, and which ran
forward, yapping with malign intentions towards the dame's scarlet-
hosed ankles.

She shook her petticoats at him, but Dennet tittered even while
declaring that Tray hurt nobody.  Mrs. Headley reviled the dog, and
then proceeded to advise Dennet that she should chop her citron
finer.  Dennet made answer "that father liked a good stout piece of
it."  Mistress Headley offered to take the chopper and instruct her
how to compound all in the true Sarum style.

"Grammercy, mistress, but we follow my grand-dame's recipe!" said
Dennet, grasping her implement firmly.

"Come, child, be not above taking a lesson from thine elders!
Where's the goose?  What?" as the girl looked amazed, "where hast
thou lived not to know that a live goose should be bled into the
mincemeat?"

"I have never lived with barbarous, savage folk," said Dennet--and
therewith she burst into an irrepressible fit of laughter, trying in
vain to check it, for a small and mischievous elf, freshly promoted
to the office of scullion, had crept up and pinned a dish-cloth to
the substantial petticoats, and as Mistress Headley whisked round to
see what was the matter, like a kitten after its tail, it followed
her like a train, while she rushed to box the ears of the offender,
crying,

"You set him on, you little saucy vixen!  I saw it in your eyes.
Let the rascal be scourged."

"Not so," said Dennet, with prim mouth and laughing eyes.  "Far be
it from me!  But 'tis ever the wont of the kitchen, when those come
there who have no call thither."

Mistress Headley flounced away, dish-cloth and all, to go whimpering
to the alderman with her tale of insults.  She trusted that her
cousin would give the pert wench a good beating.  She was not a whit
too old for it.

"How oft did you beat Giles, good kinswoman?" said Dennet demurely,
as she stood by her father.

"Whisht, whisht, child," said her father, "this may not be!  I
cannot have my guest flouted."

"If she act as our guest, I will treat her with all honour and
courtesy," said the maiden; "but when she comes where we look not
for guests, there is no saying what the black guard may take it on
them to do."

Master Headley was mischievously tickled at the retort, and not
without hope that it might offend his kinswoman into departing; but
she contented herself with denouncing all imaginable evils from
Dennet's ungoverned condition, with which she was prevented in her
beneficence from interfering by the father's foolish fondness.  He
would rue the day!

Meantime if the alderman's peace on one side was disturbed by his
visitor, on the other, suitors for Dennet's hand gave him little
rest.  She was known to be a considerable heiress, and though
Mistress Headley gave every one to understand that there was a
contract with Giles, and that she was awaiting his return, this did
not deter more wooers than Dennet ever knew of, from making
proposals to her father.  Jasper Hope was offered, but he was too
young, and besides, was a mercer--and Dennet and her father were
agreed that her husband must go on with the trade.  Then there was a
master armourer, but he was a widower with sons and daughters as old
as Dennet, and she shook her head and laughed at the bare notion.
There also came a young knight who would have turned the Dragon
court into a tilt-yard, and spent all the gold that long years of
prudent toil had amassed.

If Mistress Headley deemed each denial the result of her vigilance
for her son's interests, she was the more impelled to expatiate on
the folly of leaving a maid of sixteen to herself, to let the
household go to rack and ruin; while as to the wench, she might
prank herself in her own conceit, but no honest man would soon look
at her for a wife, if her father left her to herself, without giving
her a good stepmother, or at least putting a kinswoman in authority
over her.

The alderman was stung.  He certainly had warmed a snake on his
hearth, and how was he to be rid of it?  He secretly winked at the
resumption of a forge fire that had been abandoned, because the
noise and smoke incommoded the dwelling-house, and Kit Smallbones
hammered his loudest there, when the guest might be taking her
morning nap; but this had no effect in driving her away, though it
may have told upon her temper; and good-humoured Master Headley was
harassed more than he had ever been in his life.

"It puts me past my patience," said he, turning into Tibble's
special workshop one afternoon.  "Here hath Mistress Hillyer of the
Eagle been with me full of proposals that I would give my poor wench
to that scapegrace lad of hers, who hath been twice called to
account before the guild, but who now, forsooth, is to turn over a
new leaf."

"So I wis would the Dragon under him," quoth Tibble.

"I told her 'twas not to be thought of, and then what does the dame
but sniff the air and protest that I had better take heed, for there
may not be so many who would choose a spoilt, misruled maid like
mine.  There's the work of yonder Sarum woman.  I tell thee, Tib,
never was bull in the ring more baited than am I."

"Yea, sir," returned Tib, "there'll be no help for it till our young
mistress be wed."

"Ay! that's the rub!  But I've not seen one whom I could mate with
her--let alone one who would keep up the old house.  Giles would
have done that passably, though he were scarce worthy of the wench,
even without--"  An expressive shake of the head denoted the rest.
"And now if he ever come home at all, 'twill be as a foul-mouthed,
plundering scarecrow, like the kites of men-at-arms, who, if they
lose not their lives, lose all that makes an honest life in the
Italian wars.  I would have writ to Edmund Burgess, but I hear his
elder brother is dead, and he is driving a good traffic at York.
Belike too he is wedded."

"Nay," said Tibble, "I could tell of one who would be true and
faithful to your worship, and a loving husband to Mistress Dennet,
ay, and would be a master that all of us would gladly cleave to.
For he is godly after his lights, and sound-hearted, and wots what
good work be, and can do it."

"That were a son-in-law, Tib!  Of who speakest thou?  Is he of good
birth?"

"Yea, of gentle birth and breeding."

"And willing?  But that they all are.  Wherefore then hath he never
made suit?"

"He hath not yet his freedom."

"Who be it then?"

"He that made this elbow-piece for the suit that Queen Margaret
ordered for the little King of Scots," returned Tibble, producing an
exquisite miniature bit of workmanship.

"Stephen Birkenholt!  The fool's nephew!  Mine own prentice!"

"Yea, and the best worker in steel we have yet turned out.  Since
the sickness of last winter hath stiffened my joints and dimmed mine
eyes, I had rather trust dainty work such as this to him than to
myself."

"Stephen!  Tibble, hath he set thee on to this?"

"No, sir.  We both know too well what becometh us; but when you were
casting about for a mate for my young mistress, I could not but
think how men seek far, and overlook the jewel at their feet."

"He hath nought!  That brother of his will give him nought."

"He hath what will be better for the old Dragon and for your
worship's self, than many a bag of gold, sir."

"Thou sayst truly there, Tib.  I know him so far that he would not
be the ingrate Jack to turn his back on the old master or the old
man.  He is a good lad.  But--but--I've ever set my face against the
prentice wedding the master's daughter, save when he is of her own
house, like Giles.  Tell me, Tibble, deemst thou that the varlet
hath dared to lift his eyes to the lass?"

"I wot nothing of love!" said Tibble, somewhat grimly.  "I have seen
nought.  I only told your worship where a good son and a good master
might be had.  Is it your pleasure, sir, that we take in a freight
of sea-coal from Simon Collier for the new furnace?  His is purest,
if a mark more the chaldron."

He spoke as if he put the recommendation of the son and master on
the same line as that of the coal.  Mr. Headley answered the
business matters absently, and ended by saying he would think on the
council.

In Tibble's workroom, with the clatter of a forge close to them,
they had not heard a commotion in the court outside.  Dennet had
been standing on the steps cleaning her tame starling's cage, when
Mistress Headley had suddenly come out on the gallery behind her,
hotly scolding her laundress, and waving her cap to show how ill-
starched it was.

The bird had taken fright and flown to the tree in the court; Dennet
hastened in pursuit, but all the boys and children in the court
rushing out after her, her blandishments had no chance, and
"Goldspot" had fluttered on to the gateway.  Stephen had by this
time come out, and hastened to the gate, hoping to turn the truant
back from escaping into Cheapside; but all in vain, it flew out
while the market was in full career, and he could only call back to
her that he would not lose sight of it.

Out he hurried, Dennet waiting in a sort of despair by the tree for
a time that seemed to her endless, until Stephen reappeared under
the gate, with a signal that all was well.  She darted to meet him.
"Yea, mistress, here he is, the little caitiff.  He was just knocked
down by this country lad's cap--happily not hurt.  I told him you
would give him a tester for your bird."

"With all my heart!" and Dennet produced the coin.  "Oh!  Stephen,
are you sure he is safe?  Thou bad Goldspot, to fly away from me!
Wink with thine eye--thou saucy rogue!  Wottest thou not but for
Stephen they might be blinding thy sweet blue eyes with hot
needles?"

"His wing is grown since the moulting," said Stephen.  "It should be
cut to hinder such mischances."

"Will you do it?  I will hold him," said Dennet.  "Ah! 'tis pity,
the beauteous green gold-bedropped wing--that no armour of thine can
equal, Stephen, not even that for the little King of Scots.  But
shouldst not be so silly a bird, Goldie, even though thou hast thine
excuse.  There!  Peck not, ill birdling.  Know thy friends, Master
Stare."

And with such pretty nonsense the two stood together, Dennet in her
white cap, short crimson kirtle, little stiff collar, and white bib
and apron, holding her bird upside down in one hand, and with the
other trying to keep his angry beak from pecking Stephen, who, in
his leathern coat and apron, grimed, as well as his crisp black
hair, with soot, stood towering above her, stooping to hold out the
lustrous wing with one hand while he used his smallest pair of
shears with the other to clip the pen-feathers.

"See there, Master Alderman," cried Mistress Headley, bursting on
him from the gallery stairs.  "Be that what you call fitting for
your daughter and your prentice, a beggar lad from the heath?  I
ever told you she would bring you to shame, thus left to herself.
And now you see it."

Their heads had been near together over the starling, but at this
objurgation they started apart, both crimson in the cheeks, and
Dennet flew up to her father, bird in hand, crying, "O father,
father! suffer her not.  He did no wrong.  He was cutting my bird's
wing."

"I suffer no one to insult my child in her own house," said the
alderman, so much provoked as to be determined to put an end to it
all at once.  "Stephen Birkenholt, come here."

Stephen came, cap in hand, red in the face, with a strange tumult in
his heart, ready to plead guilty, though he had done nothing, but
imagining at the moment that his feelings had been actions.

"Stephen," said the alderman, "thou art a true and worthy lad!
Canst thou love my daughter?"

"I--I crave your pardon, sir, there was no helping it," stammered
Stephen, not catching the tone of the strange interrogation, and
expecting any amount of terrible consequences for his presumption.

"Then thou wilt be a faithful spouse to her, and son to me?  And
Dennet, my daughter, hast thou any distaste to this youth--though he
bring nought but skill and honesty"

"O, father, father!  I--I had rather have him than any other!"

"Then, Stephen Birkenholt and Dennet Headley, ye shall be man and
wife, so soon as the young man's term be over, and he be a freeman--
so he continue to be that which he seems at present.  Thereto I give
my word, I, Giles Headley, Alderman of the Chepe Ward, and thereof
ye are witnesses, all of you.  And God's blessing on it."

A tremendous hurrah arose, led by Kit Smallbones, from every workman
in the court, and the while Stephen and Dennet, unaware of anything
else, flew into one another's arms, while Goldspot, on whom the
operation had been fortunately completed, took refuge upon Stephen's
head.

"O, Mistress Dennet, I have made you black all over!" was Stephen's
first word.

"Heed not, I ever loved the black!" she cried, as her eyes sparkled.

"So I have done what was to thy mind, my lass?" said Master Headley,
who, without ever having thought of consulting his daughter, was
delighted to see that her heart was with him.

"Sir, I did not know fully--but indeed I should never have been so
happy as I am now."

"Sir," added Stephen, putting his knee to the ground, "it nearly
wrung my heart to think of her as belonging to another, though I
never durst utter aught"--and while Dennet embraced her father,
Stephen sobbed for very joy, and with difficulty said in broken
words something about a "son's duty and devotion."

They were broken in upon by Mistress Headley, who, after standing in
mute consternation, fell on them in a fury.  She understood the
device now!  All had been a scheme laid amongst them for defrauding
her poor fatherless child, driving him away, and taking up this
beggarly brat.  She had seen through the little baggage from the
first, and she pitied Master Headley.  Rage was utterly ungovernable
in those days, and she actually was flying to attack Dennet with her
nails when the alderman caught her by the wrists; and she would have
been almost too much for him, had not Kit Smallbones come to his
assistance, and carried her, kicking and screaming like a naughty
child, into the house.  There was small restraint of temper in those
days even in high life, and below it, there was some reason for the
employment of the padlock and the ducking stool.

Floods of tears restored the dame to some sort of composure; but she
declared she could stay no longer in a house where her son had been
ill-used and deceived, and she had been insulted.  The alderman
thought the insult had been the other way, but he was too glad to be
rid of her on any terms to gainsay her, and at his own charge,
undertook to procure horse and escort to convey her safely to
Salisbury the next morning.  He advised Stephen to keep out of her
sight for the rest of the day, giving leave of absence, so that the
youth, as one treading on air, set forth to carry to his brother,
his aunt, and if possible, his uncle, the intelligence that he could
as yet hardly believe was more than a happy dream.



CHAPTER XXIII.  UNWELCOME PREFERMENT



"I am a poor fallen man, unworthy now
To be thy lord and master.  Seek the king!
That sun I pray may never set."
SHAKESPEARE.


Matters flowed on peaceably with Stephen and Dennet.  The alderman
saw no reason to repent his decision, hastily as it had been made.
Stephen gave himself no unseemly airs of presumption, but worked on
as one whose heart was in the business, and Dennet rewarded her
father's trust by her discretion.

They were happily married in the summer of 1522, as soon as
Stephen's apprenticeship was over; and from that time, he was in the
position of the master's son, with more and more devolving on him as
Tibble became increasingly rheumatic every winter, and the alderman
himself grew in flesh and in distaste to exertion.

Ambrose meanwhile prospered with his master, and could easily have
obtained some office in the law courts that would have enabled him
to make a home of his own; but if he had the least inclination to
the love of women, it was all merged in a silent distant worship of
"sweet pale Margaret, rare pale Margaret," the like-minded daughter
of Sir Thomas More--an affection which was so entirely devotion at a
shrine, that it suffered no shock when Sir Thomas at length
consented to his daughter's marriage with William Roper.

Ambrose was the only person who ever received any communication from
Giles Headley.  They were few and far between, but when Stephen
Gardiner returned from his embassy to Pope Clement VII., who was
then at Orvieto, one of the suite reported to Ambrose how astonished
he had been by being accosted in good English by one of the imperial
men-at-arms, who were guarding his Holiness in actual though
unconfessed captivity.  This person had sent his commendations to
Ambrose, and likewise a laborious bit of writing, which looked as if
he were fast forgetting the art.  It bade Ambrose inform his mother
and all his friends and kin that he was well and coming to
preferment, and inclosed for Aldonza a small mother-of-pearl cross
blessed by the Pope.  Giles added that he should bring her finer
gifts by and by.

Seven years' constancy!  It gave quite a respectability to Giles's
love, and Aldonza was still ready and patient while waiting in
attendance on her beloved mistress.

Ambrose lived on in the colony at Chelsea, sometimes attending his
master, especially on diplomatic missions, and generally acting as
librarian and foreign secretary, and obtaining some notice from
Erasmus on the great scholar's visit to Chelsea.  Under such
guidance, Ambrose's opinions had settled down a good deal; and he
was a disappointment to Tibble, whose views advanced proportionably
as he worked less, and read and thought more.  He so bitterly
resented and deplored the burning of Tindal's Bible that there was
constant fear that he might bring on himself the same fate,
especially as he treasured his own copy and studied it constantly.
The reform that Wolsey had intended to effect when he obtained the
legatine authority seemed to fall into the background among
political interests, and his efforts had as yet no result save the
suppression of some useless and ill-managed small religious houses
to endow his magnificent project of York College at Oxford, with a
feeder at Ipswich, his native town.

He was waiting to obtain the papacy, when he would deal better with
the abuses.  Randall once asked him if he were not waiting to be
King of Heaven, when he could make root and branch work at once.
Hal had never so nearly incurred a flogging!

And in the meantime another influence was at work, an influence only
heard of at first in whispered jests, which made loyal-hearted
Dennet blush and look indignant, but which soon grew to sad earnest,
as she could not but avow, when she beheld the stately pomp of the
two Cardinals, Wolsey and Campeggio, sweep up to the Blackfriars
Convent to sit in judgment on the marriage of poor Queen Katharine.

"Out on them!" she said.  "So many learned men to set their wits
against one poor woman!"  And she heartily rejoiced when they came
to no decision, and the Pope was appealed to.  As to understanding
all the explanations that Ambrose brought from time to time, she
called them quirks and quiddities, and left them to her father and
Tibble to discuss in their chimney corners.

They had seen nothing of the jester for a good while, for he was
with Wolsey, who was attending the King on a progress through the
midland shires.  When the Cardinal returned to open the law courts
as Chancellor at the beginning of the autumn term, still Randall
kept away from home, perhaps because he had forebodings that he
could not bear to mention.

On the evening of that very day, London rang with the tidings that
the Great Seal had been taken from the Cardinal, and that he was
under orders to yield up his noble mansion of York House and to
retire to Esher; nay, it was reported that he was to be imprisoned
in the Tower, and the next day the Thames was crowded with more than
a thousand boats filled with people, expecting to see him landed at
the Traitors' Gate, and much disappointed when his barge turned
towards Putney.

In the afternoon, Ambrose came to the Dragon court.  Even as Stephen
figured now as a handsome prosperous young freeman of the City,
Ambrose looked well in the sober black apparel and neat ruff of a
lawyer's clerk--clerk indeed to the first lawyer in the kingdom, for
the news had spread before him that Sir Thomas More had become Lord
Chancellor.

"Thou art come to bear us word of thy promotion--for thy master's is
thine own," said the alderman heartily as he entered, shaking hands
with him.  "Never was the Great Seal in better hands."

"'Tis true indeed, your worship," said Ambrose, "though it will lay
a heavy charge on him, and divert him from much that he loveth
better still.  I came to ask of my sister Dennet a supper and a bed
for the night, as I have been on business for him, and can scarce
get back to Chelsea."

"And welcome," said Dennet.  "Little Giles and Bess have been
wearying for their uncle."

"I must not toy with them yet," said Ambrose, "I have a message for
my aunt.  Brother, wilt thou walk down to the Temple with me before
supper?"

"Yea, and how is it with Master Randall?" asked Dennet.  "Be he gone
with my Lord Cardinal?"

"He is made over to the King," said Ambrose briefly.  "'Tis that
which I must tell his wife."

"Have with thee, then," said Stephen, linking his arm into that of
his brother, for to be together was still as great an enjoyment to
them as in Forest days.  And on the way, Ambrose told what he had
not been willing to utter in full assembly in the hall.  He had been
sent by his master with a letter of condolence to the fallen
Cardinal, and likewise of inquiry into some necessary business
connected with the chancellorship.  Wolsey had not time to answer
before embarking, but as Sir Thomas had vouched for the messenger's
ability and trustiness, he had bidden Ambrose come into his barge,
and receive his instructions.  Thus Ambrose had landed with him,
just as a messenger came riding in haste from the King, with a kind
greeting, assuring his old friend that his seeming disgrace was only
for a time, and for political reasons, and sending him a ring in
token thereof.  The Cardinal had fallen on his knees to receive the
message, had snatched a gold chain and precious relic from his own
neck to reward the messenger, and then, casting about for some gift
for the King, "by ill luck," said Ambrose, "his eye lit upon our
uncle, and he instantly declared that he would bestow Patch, as the
Court chooses to call him, on the King.  Well, as thou canst guess,
Hal is hotly wroth at the treatment of his lord, whom he truly
loveth; and he flung himself before the Cardinal, and besought that
he might not be sent from his good lord.  But the Cardinal was only
chafed at aught that gainsaid him; and all he did was to say he
would have no more ado, he had made his gift.  'Get thee gone,' he
said, as if he had been ordering off a horse or dog.  Well-a-day! it
was hard to brook the sight, and Hal's blood was up.  He flatly
refused to go, saying he was the Cardinal's servant, but no villain
nor serf to be thus made over without his own will."

"He was in the right there," returned Stephen, hotly.

"Yea, save that by playing the fool, poor fellow, he hath yielded up
the rights of a wise man.  Any way, all he gat by it was that the
Cardinal bade two of the yeomen lay hands on him and bear him off.
Then there came on him that reckless mood, which, I trow, banished
him long ago from the Forest, and brought him to the motley.  He
fought with them with all his force, and broke away once--as if that
were of any use for a man in motley!--but he was bound at last, and
borne off by six of them to Windsor!"

"And thou stoodst by, and beheld it!" cried Stephen.

"Nay, what could I have done, save to make his plight worse, and
forfeit all chance of yet speaking to him?"

"Thou wert ever cool!  I wot that I could not have borne it," said
Stephen.

They told the story to Perronel, who was on the whole elated by her
husband's promotion, declaring that the King loved him well, and
that he would soon come to his senses, though for a wise man, he
certainly had too much of the fool, even as he had too much of the
wise man for the fool.

She became anxious, however, as the weeks passed by without hearing
of or from him, and at length Ambrose confessed his uneasiness to
his kind master, and obtained leave to attend him on the next
summons to Windsor.

Ambrose could not find his uncle at first.  Randall, who used to
pervade York House, and turn up everywhere when least expected, did
not appear among the superior serving-men and secretaries with whom
his nephew ranked, and of course there was no access to the state
apartments.  Sir Thomas, however, told Ambrose that he had seen
Quipsome Hal among the other jesters, but that he seemed dull and
dejected.  Then Ambrose beheld from a window a cruel sight, for the
other fools, three in number, were surrounding Hal, baiting and
teasing him, triumphing over him in fact, for having formerly
outshone them, while he stood among them like a big dog worried by
little curs, against whom he disdained to use his strength.
Ambrose, unable to bear this, ran down stairs to endeavour to
interfere; but before he could find his way to the spot, an arrival
at the gate had attracted the tormentors, and Ambrose found his
uncle leaning against the wall alone.  He looked thin and wan, the
light was gone out of his black eyes, and his countenance was in sad
contrast to his gay and absurd attire.  He scarcely cheered up when
his nephew spoke to him, though he was glad to hear of Perronel.  He
said he knew not when he should see her again, for he had been
unable to secure his suit of ordinary garments, so that even if the
King came to London, or if he could elude the other fools, he could
not get out to visit her.  He was no better than a prisoner here, he
only marvelled that the King retained so wretched a jester, with so
heavy a heart.

"Once thou wast in favour," said Ambrose.  "Methought thou couldst
have availed thyself of it to speak for the Lord Cardinal."

"What?  A senseless cur whom he kicked from him," said Randall.
"'Twas that took all spirit from me, boy.  I, who thought he loved
me, as I love him to this day.  To send me to be sport for his foes!
I think of it day and night, and I've not a gibe left under my
belt!"

"Nay," said Ambrose, "it may have been that the Cardinal hoped to
secure a true friend at the King's ear, as well as to provide for
thee."

"Had he but said so--"

"Nay, perchance he trusted to thy sharp wit."

A gleam came into Hal's eyes.  "It might be so.  Thou always wast a
toward lad, Ambrose, and if so, I was cur and fool indeed to baulk
him."

Therewith one of the other fools danced back exhibiting a silver
crown that had just been flung to him, mopping and mowing, and
demanding when Patch would have wit to gain the like.  Whereto Hal
replied by pointing to Ambrose and declaring that that gentleman had
given him better than fifty crowns.  And that night, Sir Thomas told
Ambrose that the Quipsome one had recovered himself, had been more
brilliant than ever and had quite eclipsed the other fools.

On the next opportunity, Ambrose contrived to pack in his cloak-bag,
the cap and loose garment in which his uncle was wont to cover his
motley.  The Court was still at Windsor; but nearly the whole of Sir
Thomas's stay elapsed without Ambrose being able to find his uncle.
Wolsey had been very ill, and the King had relented enough to send
his own physician to attend him.  Ambrose began to wonder if Hal
could have found any plea for rejoining his old master; but in the
last hour of his stay, he found Hal curled up listlessly on a window
seat of a gallery, his head resting on his hand.

"Uncle, good uncle!  At last!  Thou art sick?"

"Sick at heart, lad," said Hal, looking up.  "Yea, I took thy
counsel.  I plucked up a spirit, I made Harry laugh as of old,
though my heart smote me, as I thought how he was wont to be
answered by my master.  I even brooked to jest with the night-crow,
as my own poor lord called this Nan Boleyn.  And lo you now, when
his Grace was touched at my lord's sickness, I durst say there was
one sure elixir for such as he, to wit a gold Harry; and that a
King's touch was a sovereign cure for other disorders than the
King's evil.  Harry smiled, and in ten minutes more would have taken
horse for Esher, had not Madam Nan claimed his word to ride out
hawking with her.  And next, she sendeth me a warning by one of her
pert maids, that I should be whipped, if I spoke to his Grace of
unfitting matters.  My flesh could brook no more, and like a born
natural, I made answer that Nan Boleyn was no mistress of mine to
bid me hold a tongue that had spoken sooth to her betters.
Thereupon, what think you, boy?  The grooms came and soundly flogged
me for uncomely speech of my Lady Anne!  I that was eighteen years
with my Lord Cardinal, and none laid hand on me!  Yea, I was beaten;
and then shut up in a dog-hole for three days on bread and water,
with none to speak to, but the other fools jeering at me like a
rogue in a pillory."

Ambrose could hardly speak for hot grief and indignation, but he
wrung his uncle's hand, and whispered that he had hid the loose gown
behind the arras of his chamber, but he could do no more, for he was
summoned to attend his master, and a servant further thrust in to
say, "Concern yourself not for that rogue, sir, he hath been saucy,
and must mend his manners, or he will have worse."

"Away, kind sir," said Hal, "you can do the poor fool no further
good! but only bring the pack about the ears of the mangy hound."
And he sang a stave appropriated by a greater man than he -


"Then let the stricken deer go weep,
The hart ungalled play."


The only hope that Ambrose or his good master could devise for poor
Randall was that Sir Thomas should watch his opportunity and beg the
fool from the King, who might part with him as a child gives away
the once coveted toy that has failed in its hands; but the request
would need circumspection, for all had already felt the change that
had taken place in the temper of the King since Henry had resolutely
undertaken that the wrong should be the right; and Ambrose could not
but dread the effect of desperation on a man whose nature had in it
a vein of impatient recklessness.

It was after dinner, and Dennet, with her little boy and girl, was
on the steps dispensing the salt fish, broken bread, and pottage of
the Lenten meal to the daily troop who came for her alms, when,
among them, she saw, somewhat to her alarm, a gipsy man, who was
talking to little Giles.  The boy, a stout fellow of six, was
astride on the balustrade, looking up eagerly into the face of the
man, who began imitating the note of a blackbird.  Dennet,
remembering the evil propensities of the gipsy race, called hastily
to her little son to come down and return to her side; but little
Giles was unwilling to move, and called to her, "O mother, come!  He
hath a bird-call!"  In some perturbation lest the man might be
calling her bird away, Dennet descended the steps.  She was about to
utter a sharp rebuke, but Giles held out his hand imploringly, and
she paused a moment to hear the sweet full note of the "ouzel cock,
with orange tawny bill" closely imitated on a tiny bone whistle.
"He will sell it to me for two farthings," cried the boy, "and teach
me to sing on it like all the birds--"

"Yea, good mistress," said the gipsy, "I can whistle a tune that the
little master, ay, and others, might be fain to hear."

Therewith, spite of the wild dress, Dennet knew the eyes and the
voice.  And perhaps the blackbird's note had awakened echoes in
another mind, for she saw Stephen, in his working dress, come out to
the door of the shop where he continued to do all the finer work
which had formerly fallen to Tibble's share.

She lifted her boy from his perch, and bade him take the stranger to
his father, who would no doubt give him the whistle.  And thus,
having without exciting attention, separated the fugitive from the
rest of her pensioners, she made haste to dismiss them.

She was not surprised that little Giles came running back to her,
producing unearthly notes on the instrument, and telling her that
father had taken the gipsy into his workshop, and said they would
teach him bird's songs by and by.

"Steve, Steve," had been the first words uttered when the boy was
out of hearing, "hast thou a smith's apron and plenty of smut to
bestow on me?  None can tell what Harry's mood may be, when he finds
I've given him the slip.  That is the reason I durst not go to my
poor dame."

"We will send to let her know.  I thought I guessed what black ouzel
'twas!  I mind how thou didst make the like notes for us when we
were no bigger than my Giles!"

"Thou hast a kind heart, Stephen.  Here!  Is thy furnace hot enough
to make a speedy end of this same greasy gipsy doublet?  I trust not
the varlet with whom I bartered it for my motley.  And a fine
bargain he had of what I trust never to wear again to the end of my
days.  Make me a smith complete, Stephen, and then will I tell thee
my story."

"We must call Kit into counsel, ere we can do that fully," said
Stephen.

In a few minutes Hal Randall was, to all appearance, a very shabby
and grimy smith, and then he took breath to explain his anxiety and
alarm.  Once again, hearing that the Cardinal was to be exiled to
York, he had ventured on a sorry jest about old friends and old wine
being better than new; but the King, who had once been open to plain
speaking, was now incensed, threatened and swore at him!  Moreover,
one of the other fools had told him, in the way of boasting, that he
had heard Master Cromwell, formerly the Cardinal's secretary,
informing the King that this rogue was no true "natural" at all, but
was blessed (or cursed) with as good an understanding as other
folks, as was well known in the Cardinal's household, and that he
had no doubt been sent to serve as a spy, so that he was to be
esteemed a dangerous person, and had best be put under ward.

Hal had not been able to discover whether Cromwell had communicated
his name, but he suspected that it might be known to that acute
person, and he could not tell whether his compeer spoke out of a
sort of good-natured desire to warn him, or simply to triumph in his
disgrace, and leer at him for being an impostor.  At any rate, being
now desperate, he covered his parti-coloured raiment with the gown
Ambrose had brought, made a perilous descent from a window in the
twilight, scaled a wall with the agility that seemed to have
returned to him, and reached Windsor Forest.

There, falling on a camp of gipsies, he had availed himself of old
experiences in his wild Shirley days, and had obtained an exchange
of garb, his handsome motley being really a prize to the wanderers.
Thus he had been able to reach London; but he did not feel any
confidence that if he were pursued to the gipsy tent he would not be
betrayed.

In this, his sagacity was not at fault, for he had scarcely made his
explanation, when there was a knocking at the outer gate, and a
demand to enter in the name of the King, and to see Alderman Sir
Giles Headley.  Several of the stout figures of the yeomen of the
King's guard were seen crossing the court, and Stephen, committing
the charge of his uncle to Kit, threw off his apron, washed his face
and went up to the hall, not very rapidly, for he suspected that
since his father-in-law knew nothing of the arrival, he would best
baffle the inquiries by sincere denials.

And Dennet, with her sharp woman's wit, scenting danger, had whisked
herself and her children out of the hall at the first moment, and
taken them down to the kitchen, where modelling with a batch of
dough occupied both of them.

Meantime the alderman flatly denied the presence of the jester, or
the harbouring of the gipsy.  He allowed that the jester was of kin
to his son-in-law, but the good man averred in all honesty that he
knew nought of any escape, and was absolutely certain that no such
person was in the court.  Then, as Stephen entered, doffing his cap
to the King's officer, the alderman continued, "There, fair son,
this is what these gentlemen have come about.  Thy kinsman, it
seemeth, hath fled from Windsor, and his Grace is mightily incensed.
They say he changed clothes with a gipsy, and was traced hither this
morn, but I have told them the thing is impossible."

"Will the gentlemen search?" asked Stephen.  The gentlemen did
search, but they only saw the smiths in full work; and in
Smallbones' forge, there was a roaring glowing furnace, with a bare-
armed fellow feeding it with coals, so that it fairly scorched them,
and gave them double relish for the good wine and beer that was put
out on the table to do honour to them.

Stephen had just with all civility seen them off the premises when
Perronel came sobbing into the court.  They had visited her first,
for Cromwell had evidently known of Randall's haunts; they had
turned her little house upside down, and had threatened her hotly in
case she harboured a disloyal spy, who deserved hanging.  She came
to consult Stephen, for the notion of her husband wandering about,
as a sort of outlaw, was almost as terrible as the threat of his
being hanged.

Stephen beckoned her to a store-room full of gaunt figures of armour
upon blocks, and there brought up to her his extremely grimy new
hand!

There was much gladness between them, but the future had to be
considered.  Perronel had a little hoard, the amount of which she
was too shrewd to name to any one, even her husband, but she
considered it sufficient to enable him to fulfil the cherished
scheme of his life, of retiring to some small farm near his old
home, and she was for setting off at once.  But Harry Randall
declared that he could not go without having offered his services to
his old master.  He had heard of his "good lord" as sick, sad, and
deserted by those whom he had cherished, and the faithful heart was
so true in its loyalty that no persuasion could prevail in making it
turn south.

"Nay," said the wife, "did he not cast thee off himself, and serve
thee like one of his dogs?  How canst thou be bound to him?"

"There's the rub!" sighed Hal.  "He sent me to the King deeming that
he should have one full of faithful love to speak a word on his
behalf, and I, brutish oaf as I was, must needs take it amiss, and
sulk and mope till the occasion was past, and that viper Cromwell
was there to back up the woman Boleyn and poison his Grace's ear."

"As if a man must not have a spirit to be angered by such
treatment."

"Thou forgettest, good wife.  No man, but a fool, and to be
entreated as such!  Be that as it may, to York I must.  I have eaten
of my lord's bread too many years, and had too much kindness from
him in the days of his glory, to seek mine own ease now in his
adversity.  Thou wouldst have a poor bargain of me when my heart is
away."

Perronel saw that thus it would be, and that this was one of the
points on which, to her mind, her husband was more than half a
veritable fool after all.

There had long been a promise that Stephen should, in some time of
slack employment, make a visit to his old comrade, Edmund Burgess,
at York; and as some new tools and patterns had to be conveyed
thither, a sudden resolution was come to, in family conclave, that
Stephen himself should convey them, taking his uncle with him as a
serving-man, to attend to the horses.  The alderman gave full
consent, he had always wished Stephen to see York, while he himself,
with Tibble Steelman, was able to attend to the business; and while
he pronounced Randall to have a heart of gold, well worth guarding,
he still was glad when the risk was over of the King's hearing that
the runaway jester was harboured at the Dragon.  Dennet did not like
the journey for her husband, for to her mind it was perilous, but
she had had a warm affection for his uncle ever since their
expedition to Richmond together, and she did her best to reconcile
the murmuring and wounded Perronel by praises of Randall, a true and
noble heart; and that as to setting her aside for the Cardinal, who
had heeded him so little, such faithfulness only made her more
secure of his true-heartedness towards her.  Perronel was moreover
to break up her business, dispose of her house, and await her
husband's return at the Dragon.

Stephen came back after a happy month with his friend, stored with
wondrous tales and descriptions which would last the children for a
month.  He had seen his uncle present himself to the Cardinal at
Cawood Castle.  It had been a touching meeting.  Hal could hardly
restrain his tears when he saw how Wolsey's sturdy form had wasted,
and his round ruddy cheeks had fallen away, while the attitude in
which he sat in his chair was listless and weary, though he fitfully
exerted himself with his old vigour.

Hal on his side, in the dark plain dress of a citizen, was hardly
recognisable, for not only had he likewise grown thinner, and his
brown cheeks more hollow, but his hair had become almost white
during his miserable weeks at Windsor, though he was not much over
forty years old.

He came up the last of a number who presented themselves for the
Archiepiscopal blessing, as Wolsey sat under a large tree in Cawood
Park.  Wolsey gave it with his raised fingers, without special heed,
but therewith Hal threw himself on the ground, kissed his feet, and
cried, "My lord, my dear lord, your pardon."

"What hast done, fellow?  Speak!" said the Cardinal.  "Grovel not
thus.  We will be merciful."

"Ah! my lord," said Randall, lifting himself up, but with clasped
hands and tearful eyes, "I did not serve you as I ought with the
King, but if you will forgive me and take me back--"

"How now?  How couldst thou serve me?  What!"--as Hal made a
familiar gesture--"thou art not the poor fool; Quipsome Patch?  How
comest thou here?  Methought I had provided well for thee in making
thee over to the King."

"Ah! my lord, I was fool, fool indeed, but all my jests failed me.
How could I make sport for your enemies?"

"And thou hast come, thou hast left the King to follow my fallen
fortunes?" said Wolsey.  "My poor boy, he who is sitting in
sackcloth and ashes needs no jester."

"Nay, my lord, nor can I find one jest to break!  Would you but let
me be your meanest horse-boy, your scullion!"  Hal's voice was cut
short by tears as the Cardinal abandoned to him one hand.  The other
was drying eyes that seldom wept.

"My faithful Hal!" he said, "this is love indeed!"

And Stephen ere he came away had seen his uncle fully established,
as a rational creature, and by his true name, as one of the personal
attendants on the Cardinal's bed-chamber, and treated with the
affection he well deserved.  Wolsey had really seemed cheered by his
affection, and was devoting himself to the care of his hitherto
neglected and even unvisited diocese, in a way that delighted the
hearts of the Yorkshiremen.

The first idea was that Perronel should join her husband at York,
but safe modes of travelling were not easy to be found, and before
any satisfactory escort offered, there were rumours that made it
prudent to delay.  As autumn advanced, it was known that the Earl of
Northumberland had been sent to attach the Cardinal of High Treason.
Then ensued other reports that the great Cardinal had sunk and died
on his way to London for trial; and at last, one dark winter
evening, a sorrowful man stumbled up the steps of the Dragon, and as
he came into the bright light of the fire, and Perronel sprang to
meet him, he sank into a chair and wept aloud.

He had been one of those who had lifted the broken-hearted Wolsey
from his mule in the cloister of Leicester Abbey, he had carried him
to his bed, watched over him, and supported him, as the Abbot of
Leicester gave him the last Sacraments.  He had heard and treasured
up those mournful words which are Wolsey's chief legacy to the
world, "Had I but served my God, as I have served my king, He would
not have forsaken me in my old age."  For himself, he had the dying
man's blessing, and assurance that nothing had so much availed to
cheer in these sad hours as his faithful love.

Now, Perronel might do what she would with him--he cared not.

And what she did was to set forth with him for Hampshire, on a pair
of stout mules with a strong serving-man behind them.



CHAPTER XXIV.  THE SOLDIER



"Of a worthy London prentice
   My purpose is to speak,
And tell his brave adventures
   Done for his country's sake.
Seek all the world about
   And you shall hardly find
A man in valour to exceed
   A prentice' gallant mind."

The Homes of a London Prentice.

Six more years had passed over the Dragon court, when, one fine
summer evening, as the old walls rang with the merriment of the
young boys at play, there entered through the gateway a tall, well-
equipped, soldierly figure, which caught the eyes of the little
armourer world in a moment.  "Oh, that's a real Milan helmet!"
exclaimed the one lad.

"And oh, what a belt and buff coat!" cried another.

The subject of their admiration advanced muttering, "As if I'd not
been away a week," adding, "I pray you, pretty lads, doth Master
Alderman Headley still dwell here?"

"Yea, sir, he is our grandfather," said the elder boy, holding a
lesser one by the shoulder as he spoke.

"Verily!  And what may be your names?"

"I am Giles Birkenholt, and this is my little brother, Dick."

"Even as I thought.  Wilt thou run in to your grandsire, and tell
him?"

The bigger boy interrupted, "Grandfather is going to bed.  He is old
and weary, and cannot see strangers so late.  'Tis our father who
heareth all the orders."

"And," added the little one, with wide open grave eyes, "Mother bade
us run out and play and not trouble father, because uncle Ambrose is
so downcast because they have cut off the head of good Sir Thomas
More."

"Yet," said the visitor, "methinks your father would hear of an old
comrade.  Or stay, where be Tibble Steelman and Kit Smallbones?"

"Tibble is in the hall, well-nigh as sad as uncle Ambrose," began
Dick; but Giles, better able to draw conclusions, exclaimed,
"Tibble!  Kit!  You know them, sir!  Oh! are you the Giles Headley
that ran away to be a soldier ere I was born?  Kit!  Kit! see here--
" as the giant, broader and perhaps a little more bent, but with
little loss of strength, came forward out of his hut, and taking up
the matter just where it had been left fourteen years before,
demanded as they shook hands, "Ah!  Master Giles, how couldst thou
play me such a scurvy trick?"

"Nay, Kit, was it not best for all that I turned my back to make way
for honest Stephen?"

By this time young Giles had rushed up the stair to the hall, where,
as he said truly, Stephen was giving his brother such poor comfort
as could be had from sympathy, when listening to the story of the
cheerful, brave resignation of the noblest of all the victims of
Henry VIII.  Ambrose had been with Sir Thomas well-nigh to the last,
had carried messages between him and his friends during his
imprisonment, had handed his papers to him at his trial, had been
with Mrs. Roper when she broke through the crowd and fell on his
neck as he walked from Westminster Hall with the axe-edge turned
towards him; had received his last kind farewell, counsel, and
blessing, and had only not been with him on the scaffold because Sir
Thomas had forbidden it, saying, in the old strain of mirth, which
never forsook him, "Nay, come not, my good friend.  Thou art of a
queasy nature, and I would fain not haunt thee against thy will."

All was over now, the wise and faithful head had fallen, because it
would not own the wrong for the right; and Ambrose had been brought
home by his brother, a being confounded, dazed, seeming hardly able
to think or understand aught save that the man whom he had above all
loved and looked up to was taken from him, judicially murdered, and
by the King.  The whole world seemed utterly changed to him, and as
to thinking or planning for himself, he was incapable of it; indeed,
he looked fearfully ill.  His little nephew came up to his father's
knee, pausing, though open-mouthed, and at the first token of
permission, bursting out, "Oh! father!  Here's a soldier in the
court!  Kit is talking to him.  And he is Giles Headley that ran
away.  He has a beauteous Spanish leathern coat, and a belt with
silver bosses--and a morion that Phil Smallbones saith to be of
Milan, but I say it is French."

Stephen had no sooner gathered the import of this intelligence than
he sprang down almost as rapidly as his little boy, with his
welcome.  Nor did Giles Headley return at all in the dilapidated
condition that had been predicted.  He was stout, comely, and well
fleshed, and very handsomely clad and equipped in a foreign style,
with nothing of the lean wolfish appearance of Sir John Fulford.
The two old comrades heartily shook one another by the hand in real
gladness at the meeting.  Stephen's welcome was crossed by the
greeting and inquiry whether all was well.

"Yea.  The alderman is hale and hearty, but aged.  Your mother is
tabled at a religious house at Salisbury."

"I know.  I landed at Southampton and have seen her."

"And Dennet," Stephen added with a short laugh, "she could not wait
for you."

"No, verily.  Did I not wot well that she cared not a fico for me?
I hoped when I made off that thou wouldst be the winner, Steve, and
I am right glad thou art, man."

"I can but thank thee, Giles," said Stephen, changing to the
familiar singular pronoun.  "I have oft since thought what a foolish
figure I should have cut had I met thee among the Badgers, after
having given leg bail because I might not brook seeing thee wedded
to her.  For I was sore tempted--only thou wast free, and mine
indenture held me fast."

"Then it was so!  And I did thee a good turn!  For I tell thee,
Steve, I never knew how well I liked thee till I was wounded and
sick among those who heeded neither God nor man!  But one word more,
Stephen, ere we go in.  The Moor's little maiden, is she still
unwedded?"

"Yea," was Stephen's answer.  "She is still waiting-maid to Mistress
Roper, daughter to good Sir Thomas More; but alack, Giles, they are
in sore trouble, as it may be thou hast heard--and my poor brother
is like one distraught."

Ambrose did indeed meet Giles like one in a dream.  He probably
would have made the same mechanical greeting, if the Emperor or the
Pope had been at that moment presented to him; but Dennet, who had
been attending to her father, made up all that was wanting in
cordiality.  She had always had a certain sense of shame for having
flouted her cousin, and, as his mother told her, driven him to death
and destruction, and it was highly satisfactory to see him safe and
sound, and apparently respectable and prosperous.

Moreover, grieved as all the family were for the fate of the
admirable and excellent More, it was a relief to those less closely
connected with him to attend to something beyond poor Ambrose's
sorrow and his talk, the which moreover might be perilous if any
outsider listened and reported it to the authorities as disaffection
to the King.  So Giles told his story, sitting on the gallery in the
cool of the summer evening, and marvelling over and over again how
entirely unchanged all was since his first view of the Dragon court
as a proud, sullen, raw lad twenty summers ago.  Since that time he
had seen so much that the time appeared far longer to him than to
those who had stayed at home.

It seemed that Fulford had from the first fascinated him more than
any of the party guessed, and that each day of the free life of the
expedition, and of contact with the soldiery, made a return to the
monotony of the forge, the decorous life of a London citizen, and
the bridal with a child, to whom he was indifferent, seem more
intolerable to him.  Fulford imagining rightly that the knowledge of
his intentions might deter young Birkenholt from escaping, enjoined
strict secrecy on either lad, not intending them to meet till it
should be too late to return, and therefore had arranged that Giles
should quit the party on the way to Calais, bringing with him Will
Wherry, and the horse he rode.

Giles had then been enrolled among the Badgers.  He had little to
tell about his life among them till the battle of Pavia, where he
had had the good fortune to take three French prisoners; but a stray
shot from a fugitive had broken his leg during the pursuit, and he
had been laid up in a merchant's house at Pavia for several months.
He evidently looked back to the time with gratitude, as having
wakened his better associations, which had been well-nigh stifled
during the previous years of the wild life of a soldier of fortune.
His host's young daughter had eyes like Aldonza, and the almost
forgotten possibility of returning to his love a brave and
distinguished man awoke once more.  His burgher thrift began to
assert itself again, and he deposited a nest-egg from the ransoms of
his prisoners in the hands of his host, who gave him bonds by which
he could recover the sum from Lombard correspondents in London.

He was bound by his engagements to join the Badgers again, or he
would have gone home on his recovery; and he had shared in the
terrible taking of Rome, of which he declared that he could not
speak--with a significant look at Dennet and her children, who were
devouring his words.  He had, however, stood guard over a lady and
her young children whom some savage Spaniards were about to murder,
and the whole family had overpowered him with gratitude, lodged him
sumptuously in their house, and shown themselves as grateful to him
as if he had given them all the treasure which he had abstained from
seizing.

The sickness brought on by their savage excesses together with the
Roman summer had laid low many of the Badgers.  When the Prince of
Orange drew off the army from the miserable city, scarce seven score
of that once gallant troop were in marching order, and Sir John
Fulford himself was dying.  He sent for Giles, as less of a demon
than most of the troop, and sent a gold medal, the only fragment of
spoil remaining to him, to his daughter Perronel.  To Giles himself
Fulford bequeathed Abenali's well-tested sword, and he died in the
comfortable belief--so far as he troubled himself about the matter
at all--that there were special exemptions for soldiers.

The Badgers now incorporated themselves with another broken body of
Landsknechts, and fell under the command of a better and more
conscientious captain.  Giles, who had been horrified rather than
hardened by the experiences of Rome, was found trustworthy and rose
in command.  The troop was sent to take charge of the Pope at
Orvieto, and thus it was that he had fallen in with the Englishmen
of Gardiner's suite, and had been able to send his letter to
Ambrose.  Since he had found the means of rising out of the slough,
he had made up his mind to continue to serve till he had won some
honour, and had obtained enough to prevent his return as a hungry
beggar.

His corps became known for discipline and valour.  It was trusted
often, was in attendance on the Emperor, and was fairly well paid.
Giles was their "ancient" and had charge of the banner, nor could it
be doubted that he had flourished.  His last adventure had been the
expedition to Tunis, when 20,000 Christian captives had been set
free from the dungeons and galleys, and so grand a treasure had been
shared among the soldiery that Giles, having completed the term of
service for which he was engaged, decided on returning to England,
before, as he said, he grew any older, to see how matters were
going.

"For the future," he said, "it depended on how he found things.  If
Aldonza would none of him, he should return to the Emperor's
service.  If she would go with him, he held such a position that he
could provide for her honourably.  Or he could settle in England.
For he had a good sum in the hands of Lombard merchants; having made
over to them spoils of war, ransoms, and arrears when he obtained
them; and having at times earned something by exercising his craft,
which he said had been most valuable to him.  Indeed he thought he
could show Stephen and Tibble a few fresh arts he had picked up at
Milan.

Meantime his first desire was to see Aldonza.  She was still at
Chelsea with her mistress, and Ambrose, to his brother's regret,
went thither every day, partly because he could not keep away, and
partly to try to be of use to the family.  Giles might accompany
him, though he still looked so absorbed in his trouble that it was
doubtful whether he had really understood what was passing, or that
he was wanted to bring about an interview between his companion and
Aldonza.

The beautiful grounds at Chelsea, in their summer beauty, looked
inexpressibly mournful, deprived of him who had planted and
cherished the trees and roses.  As they passed along in the barge,
one spot after another recalled More's bright jests or wise words;
above all, the very place where he had told his son-in-law Roper
that he was merry, not because he was safe, but because the fight
was won, and his conscience had triumphed against the King he loved
and feared.

Giles told of the report that the Emperor had said he would have
given a hundred of his nobles for one such councillor as More, and
the prospect of telling this to the daughters had somewhat cheered
Ambrose.  They found a guard in the royal livery at the stairs to
the river, and at the door of the house, but these had been there
ever since Sir Thomas's apprehension.  They knew Ambrose Birkenholt,
and made no objection to his passing in and leaving his companion to
walk about among the borders and paths, once so trim, but already
missing their master's hand and eye.

Very long it seemed to Giles, who was nearly despairing, when a
female figure in black came out of one of the side doors, which were
not guarded, and seemed to be timidly looking for him.  Instantly he
was at her side.

"Not here," she said, and in silence led the way to a pleached alley
out of sight of the windows.  There they stood still.  It was a
strange meeting of two who had not seen each other for fourteen
years, when the one was a tall, ungainly youth, the other well-nigh
a child.  And now Giles was a fine, soldierly man in the prime of
life, with a short, curled beard, and powerful, alert bearing, and
Aldonza, though the first flower of her youth had gone by, yet,
having lived a sheltered and far from toilsome life, was a really
beautiful woman, gracefully proportioned, and with the delicate
features and clear olive skin of the Andalusian Moor.  Her eyes,
always her finest feature, were sunken with weeping, but their soft
beauty could still be seen.  Giles threw himself on his knee and
grasped at her hand.

"My love!--my only love!" he cried.

"Oh! how can I think of such matters now--now, when it is thus with
my dear mistress," said Aldonza, in a mournful voice, as though her
tears were all spent--yet not withholding her hand.

"You knew me before you knew her," said Giles.  "See, Aldonza, what
I have brought back to you."

And he half drew the sword her father had made.  She gave a gasp of
delight, for well she knew every device in the gold inlaying of the
blade, and she looked at Giles with eyes fall of gratitude.

"I knew thou wouldst own me," said Giles.  "I have fought and gone
far from thee, Aldonza.  Canst not spare one word for thine old
Giles?"

"Ah, Giles--there is one thing which if you will do for my mistress,
I would be yours from--from my heart of hearts."

"Say it, sweetheart, and it is done."

"You know not.  It is perilous, and may be many would quail.  Yet it
may be less perilous for you than for one who is better known."

"Peril and I are well acquainted, my heart."  She lowered her voice
as her eyes dilated, and she laid her hand on his arm.  "Thou
wottest what is on London Bridge gates?"

"I saw it, a sorry sight."

"My mistress will not rest till that dear and sacred head, holy as
any blessed relic, be taken down so as not to be the sport of sun
and wind, and cruel men gaping beneath.  She cannot sleep, she
cannot sit or stand still, she cannot even kiss her child for
thinking of it.  Her mind is set on taking it down, yet she will not
peril her husband.  Nor verily know I how any here could do the
deed."

"Ha!  I have scaled a wall ere now.  I bare our banner at Goletta,
with the battlements full of angry Moors, not far behind the
Emperor's."

"You would?  And be secret?  Then indeed nought would be overmuch
for you.  And this very night--"

"The sooner the better."

She not only clasped his hand in thanks, but let him raise her face
to his, and take the reward he felt his due.  Then she said she must
return, but Ambrose would bring him all particulars.  Ambrose was as
anxious as herself and her mistress that the thing should be done,
but was unfit by all his habits, and his dainty, scholarly niceness,
to render such effectual assistance as the soldier could do.  Giles
offered to scale the gate by night himself, carry off the head, and
take it to any place Mrs. Roper might appoint, with no assistance
save such as Ambrose could afford.  Aldonza shuddered a little at
this, proving that her heart had gone out to him already, but with
this he had to be contented, for she went back into the house, and
he saw her no more.  Ambrose came back to him, and, with something
more like cheerfulness than he had yet seen, said, "Thou art happy,
Giles."

"More happy than I durst hope--to find her--"

"Tush!  I meant not that.  But to be able to do the work of the holy
ones of old who gathered the remnants of the martyrs, while I have
indeed the will, but am but a poor craven!  It is gone nearer to
comfort that sad-hearted lady than aught else."

It appeared that Mrs. Roper would not be satisfied unless she
herself were present at the undertaking, and this was contrary to
the views of Giles, who thought the further off women were in such a
matter the better.  There was a watch at the outer entrance of
London Bridge, the trainbands taking turns to supply it, but it was
known by experience that they did not think it necessary to keep
awake after belated travellers had ceased to come in; and Sir Thomas
More's head was set over the opposite gateway, looking inwards at
the City.  The most suitable hour would be between one and two
o'clock, when no one would be stirring, and the summer night would
be at the shortest.  Mrs. Roper was exceedingly anxious to implicate
no one, and to prevent her husband and brother from having any
knowledge of an act that William Roper might have prohibited, as if
she could not absolutely exculpate him, it might be fatal to him.
She would therefore allow no one to assist save Ambrose, and a few
more devoted old servants, of condition too low for anger to be
likely to light upon them.  She was to be rowed with muffled oars to
the spot, to lie hid in the shadow of the bridge till a signal like
the cry of the pee-wit was exchanged from the bridge, then approach
the stairs at the inner angle of the bridge where Giles and Ambrose
would meet her.

Giles's experience as a man-at-arms stood him in good stead.  He
purchased a rope as he went home, also some iron ramps.  He took a
survey of the arched gateway in the course of the afternoon, and
shutting himself into one of the worksheds with Ambrose, he
constructed such a rope ladder as was used in scaling fortresses,
especially when seized at night by surprise.  He beguiled the work
by a long series of anecdotes of adventures of the kind, of all of
which Ambrose heard not one word.  The whole court, and especially
Giles number three, were very curious as to their occupation, but
nothing was said even to Stephen, for it was better, if Ambrose
should be suspected, that he should be wholly ignorant, but he had--
they knew not how--gathered somewhat.  Only Ambrose was, at parting
for the night, obliged to ask him for the key of the gate.

"Brother," then he said, "what is this work I see?  Dost think I can
let thee go into a danger I do not partake?  I will share in this
pious act towards the man I have ever reverenced."

So at dead of night the three men stole out together, all in the
plainest leathern suits.  The deed was done in the perfect stillness
of the sleeping City, and without mishap or mischance.  Stephen's
strong hand held the ladder securely and aided to fix it to the
ramps, and just as the early dawn was touching the summit of St.
Paul's spire with a promise of light, Giles stepped into the boat,
and reverently placed his burden within the opening of a velvet
cushion that had been ripped up and deprived of part of the
stuffing, so as to conceal it effectually.  The brave Margaret
Roper, the English Antigone, well knowing that all depended on her
self-control, refrained from aught that might shake it.  She only
raised her face to Giles and murmured from dry lips, "Sir, God must
reward you!"  And Aldonza, who sat beside her, held out her hand.

Ambrose was to go with them to the priest's house, where Mrs. Roper
was forced to leave her treasure, since she durst not take it to
Chelsea, as the royal officers were already in possession, and the
whole family were to depart on the ensuing day.  Stephen and Giles
returned safely to Cheapside.



CHAPTER XXV.  OLD HAUNTS



"O the oak, and the birch, and the bonny holly tree,
They flourish best at home in my own countree."

When the absence of the barbarous token of the execution was
discovered, suspicion instantly fell on the More family, and
Margaret, her husband, and her brother, were all imprisoned.  The
brave lady took all upon herself, and gave no names of her
associates in the deed, and as Henry VIII. still sometimes had
better moods, all were soon released.

But that night had given Ambrose a terrible cough, so that Dennet
kept him in bed two days.  Indeed he hardly cared to rise from it.
His whole nature, health, spirits, and mind, had been so cruelly
strained, and he was so listless, so weak, so incapable of rousing
himself, or turning to any fresh scheme of life, that Stephen
decided on fulfilling a long-cherished plan of visiting their native
home and seeing their uncle, who had, as he had contrived to send
them word, settled down on a farm which he had bought with
Perronel's savings, near Romsey.  Headley, who was lingering till
Aldonza could leave her mistress and decide on any plan, undertook
to attend to the business, and little Giles, to his great delight,
was to accompany them.

So the brothers went over the old ground.  They slept in the hostel
at Dogmersfield where the Dragon mark and the badge of the
Armourers' Company had first appeared before them.  They found the
very tree where the alderman had been tied, and beneath which Spring
lay buried, while little Giles gazed with ecstatic, almost religious
veneration, and Ambrose seemed to draw in new life with the fresh
air of the heath, now becoming rich with crimson bells.  They
visited Hyde Abbey, and the well-clothed, well-mounted travellers
received a better welcome than had fallen to the lot of the hungry
lads.  They were shown the grave of old Richard Birkenholt in the
cloister, and Stephen left a sum to be expended in masses for his
behoof.  They looked into St. Elizabeth's College, but the kind
warden was dead, and a trembling old man who looked at them through
the wicket hoped they were not sent from the Commissioners.  For the
visitation of the lesser religious houses was going on, and St.
Elizabeth's was already doomed.  Stephen inquired at the White Hart
for Father Shoveller, and heard that he had grown too old to perform
the office of a bailiff, and had retired to the parent abbey.  The
brothers therefore renounced their first scheme of taking Silkstede
in their way, and made for Romsey.  There, under the shadow of the
magnificent nunnery, they dined pleasantly by the waterside at the
sign of Bishop Blaise, patron of the woolcombers of the town, and
halted long enough to refresh Ambrose, who was equal to very little
fatigue.  It amused Stephen to recollect how mighty a place he had
once thought the little town.

Did mine host know Master Randall?  What, Master Randall of
Baddesley?  He should think so!  Was not the good man or his good
wife here every market day, with a pleasant word for every one!  Men
said he had had some good office about the Court, as steward or the
like--for he was plainly conversant with great men, though he made
no boast.  If these guests were kin of his, they were welcome for
his sake.

So the brothers rode on amid the gorse and heather till they came to
a broad-spreading oak tree, sheltering a farmhouse built in frames
of heavy timber, filled up with bricks set in zigzag patterns, with
a high-pitched roof and tall chimneys.  Barns and stacks were near
it, and fields reclaimed from the heath were waving with corn just
tinged with the gold of harvest.  Three or four cows, of the tawny
hue that looked so home-like to the brothers, were being released
from the stack-yard after being milked, and conducted to their field
by a tall, white-haired man in a farmer's smock with a little child
perched on his shoulder, who gave a loud jubilant cry at the sight
of the riders.  Stephen, pushing on, began the question whether
Master Randall dwelt there, but it broke off half way into a cry of
recognition on either side, Harry's an absolute shout.  "The lads,
the lads!  Wife, wife! 'tis our own lads!"

And as Perronel, more buxom and rosy than London had ever made her,
came forth from her dairy, and there was a melee of greetings, and
Stephen would have asked what homeless little one the pair had
adopted, he was cut short by an exulting laugh.  "No more adopted
than thy Giles there, Stephen.  'Tis our own boy, Thomas Randall!
Yea, and if he have come late, he is the better loved, though I trow
Perronel there will ever look on Ambrose as her eldest son."

"And by my troth, he needs good country diet and air!" cried
Perronel.  "Thou hast had none to take care of thee, Ambrose.  They
have let thee pine and dwine over thy books.  I must take thee in
hand."

"'Tis what I brought him to thee for, good aunt," said Stephen,
smiling.

Great was the interchange of news over the homely hearty meal.  It
was plain that no one could be happier, or more prosperous in a
humble way, than the ex-jester and his wife; and if anything could
restore Ambrose it would surely be the homely plenty and motherly
care he found there.

Stephen heard another tale of his half-brother.  His wife had soon
been disgusted by the loneliness of the verdurer's lodge, and was
always finding excuses for going to Southampton, where she and her
daughter had both caught the plague, imported in some Eastern
merchandise, and had died.  The only son had turned out wild and
wicked, and had been killed in a broil which he had provoked:  and
John, a broken-down man, with no one to enjoy the wealth he had
accumulated, had given up his office as verdurer, and retired to an
estate which he had purchased on the skirts of the Forest.

Stephen rode thither to see him, and found him a dying man,
tyrannised over and neglected by his servants, and having often
bitterly regretted his hardness towards his young brothers.  All
that Stephen did for him he received as tokens of pardon, and it was
not possible to leave him until, after a fortnight's watching, he
died in his brother's arms.  He had made no will, and Ambrose thus
inherited a property which made his future maintenance no longer an
anxiety to his brother.

He himself seemed to care very little for the matter.  To be allowed
to rest under Perronel's care, to read his Erasmus' Testament, and
attend mass on Sundays at the little Norman church, seemed all that
he wished.  Stephen tried to persuade him that he was young enough
at thirty-five to marry and begin life again on the fair woodland
river-bordered estate that was his portion, but he shook his head.
"No, Stephen, my work is over.  I could only help my dear master,
and that is at an end.  Dean Colet is gone, Sir Thomas is gone, what
more have I to do here?  Old ties are broken, old bonds severed.
Crime and corruption were protested against in vain; and, now that
judgment is beginning at the house of God, I am thankful that I am
not like to live to see it."

Perronel scolded and exhorted him, and told him he would be stronger
when the hot weather was over, but Ambrose only smiled, and Stephen
saw a change in him, even in this fortnight, which justified his
forebodings.

Stephen and his uncle found a trustworthy bailiff to manage the
estate, and Ambrose remained in the house where he could now be no
burthen.  Stephen was obliged to leave him and take home young
Giles, who had, he found, become so completely a country lad,
enjoying everything to the utmost, that he already declared that he
would much rather be a yeoman and forester than an armourer, and
that he did not want to be apprenticed to that black forge.

This again made Ambrose smile with pleasure as he thought of the boy
as keeping up the name of Birkenholt in the Forest.  The one wish he
expressed was that Stephen would send down Tibble Steelman to be
with him.  For in truth they both felt that in London Tib might at
any time be laid hands on, and suffer at Smithfield for his
opinions.  The hope of being a comfort to Ambrose was perhaps the
only idea that could have counterbalanced the sense that he ought
not to fly from martyrdom; and as it proved, the invitation came
only just in time.  Three days after Tibble had been despatched by
the Southampton carrier in charge of all the comforts Dennet could
put together, Bishop Stokesley's grim "soumpnour" came to summon him
to the Bishop's court, and there could be little question that he
would have courted the faggot and stake.  But as he was gone out of
reach, no further inquiries were made after him.

Dennet had told her husband that she had been amazed to find how, in
spite of a very warm affection for her, her husband, and children,
her father hankered after the old name, and grieved that he could
not fulfil his old engagement to his cousin Robert.  Giles Headley
had managed the business excellently during Stephen's absence, had
shown himself very capable, and gained good opinions from all.
Rubbing about in the world had been very good for him; and she
verily believed that nothing would make her father so happy as for
them to offer to share the business with Giles.  She would on her
part make Aldonza welcome, and had no fears of not agreeing with
her.  Besides--if little Giles were indeed to be heir to Testside
was not the way made clear?

So thus it was.  The alderman was very happy in the arrangement, and
Giles Headley had not forfeited his rights to be a freeman of London
or a member of the Armourers' Guild.  He married Aldonza at
Michaelmas, and all went well and peacefully in the household.
Dennet never quitted her father while he lived; but Stephen
struggled through winter roads and floods, and reached Baddesley in
time to watch his brother depart in peace, his sorrow and
indignation for his master healed by the sense of his martyrdom, and
his trust firm and joyful.  "If this be, as it is, dying of grief,"
said Hal Randall, "surely it is a blessed way to die!"

A few winters later Stephen and Dennet left Giles Headley in sole
possession of the Dragon, with their second son as an apprentice,
while they themselves took up the old forest life as Master and
Mistress Birkenholt of Testside, where they lived and died honoured
and loved.




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