Chapter Fourteen.

Chapter Fourteen.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 Ward 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 fathouse!” 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 Gouzalo 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 hunt 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 Ward with his master’s consent whenever he could be snared, 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 recked 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 grand-daughter 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 Saint 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, whoseesprit de corpswas 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 Saint George, there be not many of that sort after they be 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 mid-day 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.

“I am a gentleman of a company.”Shakespeare.

“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 Ward 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 fathouse!” 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 Gouzalo 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 hunt 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 Ward with his master’s consent whenever he could be snared, 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 recked 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 grand-daughter 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 Saint 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, whoseesprit de corpswas 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 Saint George, there be not many of that sort after they be 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 mid-day 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 Fifteen.Heave Half a Brick at him.“For strangers then did so increase,By reason of King Henry’s queen,And privileged in many a placeTo dwell, as was in London seen.Poor tradesmen had small dealing thenAnd who but strangers bore the bell,Which was a grief to EnglishmenTo 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 Ward, 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 Number 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 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! D’ye 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 off 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 Saint 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 Ward, 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 hedidtell 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 Saint 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, “Caelum caeli 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 patriâ,” 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.

“For strangers then did so increase,By reason of King Henry’s queen,And privileged in many a placeTo dwell, as was in London seen.Poor tradesmen had small dealing thenAnd who but strangers bore the bell,Which was a grief to EnglishmenTo see them here in London dwell.”Ill May Day,by Churchill, a Contemporary Poet.

“For strangers then did so increase,By reason of King Henry’s queen,And privileged in many a placeTo dwell, as was in London seen.Poor tradesmen had small dealing thenAnd who but strangers bore the bell,Which was a grief to EnglishmenTo 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 Ward, 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 Number 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 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! D’ye 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 off 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 Saint 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 Ward, 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 hedidtell 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 Saint 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, “Caelum caeli 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 patriâ,” 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 Sixteen.May Eve.“The rich, the poor, the old, the young,Beyond the seas though born and bred,By prentices they suffered wrong,When armèd 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 play-fellows 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 eleven of the clock there were six or seven hundreds in Cheap. And out of Pawle’s Churchyard came three hundred which wist not of the others.” For the most part all was involved 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 Saint 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 Saint 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 Saint 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 Saint 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 Saint Paul’s, but as they came into Warwick Lane they heard fresh shouts and wild cries, and at the archway leading 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 Saint 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 lie 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 Saint 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 be made on the lap of the young girl. Colet knelt over him so as to be able to hear, while Lucas and Ambrose withdrew, 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 Saint 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 Saint 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 Ward.” 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 Ward, especially at the summons of the Dean of Saint 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 Saint Paul’s they parted, the husband and wife going towards Warwick Inner Ward, 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 toourlads, 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.

“The rich, the poor, the old, the young,Beyond the seas though born and bred,By prentices they suffered wrong,When armèd thus they gather’d head.”Ill May Day.

“The rich, the poor, the old, the young,Beyond the seas though born and bred,By prentices they suffered wrong,When armèd 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 play-fellows 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 eleven of the clock there were six or seven hundreds in Cheap. And out of Pawle’s Churchyard came three hundred which wist not of the others.” For the most part all was involved 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 Saint 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 Saint 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 Saint 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 Saint 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 Saint Paul’s, but as they came into Warwick Lane they heard fresh shouts and wild cries, and at the archway leading 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 Saint 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 lie 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 Saint 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 be made on the lap of the young girl. Colet knelt over him so as to be able to hear, while Lucas and Ambrose withdrew, 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 Saint 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 Saint 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 Ward.” 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 Ward, especially at the summons of the Dean of Saint 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 Saint Paul’s they parted, the husband and wife going towards Warwick Inner Ward, 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 toourlads, 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.

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