The Armourer's Prentices

“So off was she to the King again, and though he and his master pished and pshawed, and said if one and another were to be set free privily in this sort, there would be none to come and beg for mercy as a warming to all malapert youngsters to keep within bounds, ‘Nay, verily,’ quoth I, seeing the moment for shooting a fool’s bolt among them, ‘methinks Master Death will have been a pick-lock before you are ready for them, and then who will stand to cry mercy?’”

The narrative was broken off short by a cry of jubilee in the court.  Workmen, boys, and all were thronging together, Kit Smallbones’ head towering in the midst.  Vehement welcomes seemed in progress.  “Stephen!  Stephen!” shouted Dennet, and flew out of the hall and down the steps.

“The lad himself!” exclaimed the jester, leaping down after her.

“Stephen, the good boy!” said Master Headley, descending more slowly, but not less joyfully.

Yes, Stephen himself it was, who had quietly walked into the court.  Master Hope and Master Todd had brought the order for Jasper’s release, had paid the captain’s exorbitant fees for both, and, while the sick boy was carried home in a litter, Stephen had entered the Dragon court through the gates, as if he were coming home from an errand; though the moment he was recognised by the little four-year old Smallbones, there had been a general rush and shout of ecstatic welcome, led by Giles Headley, who fairly threw himself on Stephen’s neck, as they met like comrades after a desperate battle.  Not one was there who did not claim a grasp of the boy’s hand, and who did not pour out welcomes and greetings, while in the midst, the released captive looked, to say the truth, very spiritless, faded, dusty, nay dirty.  The court seemed spinning round with him, and the loud welcomes roared in his ears.  He was glad that Dennet took one hand, and Giles the other, declaring that he must be led to the grandmother instantly.

He muttered something about being in too foul trim to go near her, but Dennet held him fast, and he was too dizzy to make much resistance.  Old Mrs. Headley was better again, though not able to do much but sit by the fire kept burning to drive away the plague which was always smouldering in London.

She held out her hands to Stephen, as he knelt down by her.  “Take an old woman’s blessing, my good youth,” she said.  “Right glad am I to see thee once more.  Thou wilt not be the worse for the pains thou hast spent on the little lad, though they have tried thee sorely.”

Stephen, becoming somewhat less dazed, tried to fulfil his long cherished intention of thanking Dennet for her intercession, but the instant he tried to speak, to his dismay and indignation, tears choked his voice, and he could do nothing but weep, as if, thought he, his manhood had been left behind in the jail.

“Vex not thyself,” said the old dame, as she saw him struggling with his sobs.  “Thou art worn out—Giles here was not half his own man when he came out, nor is he yet.  Nay, beset him not, children.  He should go to his chamber, change these garments, and rest ere supper-time.”

Stephen was fain to obey, only murmuring an inquiry for his brother, to which his uncle responded that if Ambrose were at home, the tidings would send him to the Dragon instantly; but he was much with his old master, who was preparing to leave England, his work here being ruined.

The jester then took leave, accepting conditionally an invitation to supper.  Master Headley, Smallbones, and Tibble now knew who he was, but the secret was kept from all the rest of the household, lest Stephen should be twitted with the connection.

Cold water was not much affected by the citizens of London, but smiths’ and armourers’ work entailed a freer use of it than less grimy trades; and a bath and Sunday garments made Stephen more like himself, though still he felt so weary and depressed that he missed the buoyant joy of release to which he had been looking forward.

He was sitting on the steps, leaning against the rail, so much tired that he hoped none of his comrades would notice that he had come out, when Ambrose hurried into the court, having just heard tidings of his freedom, and was at his side at once.  The two brothers sat together, leaning against one another as if they had all that they could wish or long for.  They had not met for more than a week, for Ambrose’s finances had not availed to fee the turnkeys to give him entrance.

“And what art thou doing, Ambrose?” asked Stephen, rousing a little from his lethargy.  “Methought I heard mine uncle say thine occupation was gone?”

“Even so,” replied Ambrose.  “Master Lucas will sail in a week’s time to join his brother at Rotterdam, bearing with him what he hath been able to save out of the havoc.  I wot not if I shall ever see the good man more.”

“I am glad thou dost not go with him,” said Stephen, with a hand on his brother’s leather-covered knee.

“I would not put seas between us,” returned Ambrose.  “Moreover, though I grieve to lose my good master, who hath been so scurvily entreated here, yet, Stephen, this trouble and turmoil hath brought me that which I longed for above all, even to have speech with the Dean of St. Paul’s.”

He then told Stephen how he had brought Dean Colet to administer the last rites to Abenali, and how that good man had bidden Lucas to take shelter at the Deanery, in the desolation of his own abode.  This had led to conversation between the Dean and the printer; Lucas, who distrusted all ecclesiastics, would accept no patronage.  He had a little hoard, buried in the corner of his stall, which would suffice to carry him to his native home and he wanted no more; but he had spoken of Ambrose, and the Dean was quite ready to be interested in the youth who had led him to Abenali.

“He had me to his privy chamber,” said Ambrose, “and spake to me as no man hath yet spoken—no, not even Tibble.  He let me utter all my mind, nay, I never wist before even what mine own thoughts were till he set them before me—as it were in a mirror.”

“Thou wast ever in a harl,” said Stephen, drowsily using the Hampshire word for whirl or entanglement.

“Yea.  On the one side stood all that I had ever believed or learnt before I came hither of the one true and glorious Mother-Church to whom the Blessed Lord had committed the keys of His kingdom, through His holy martyrs and priests to give us the blessed host and lead us in the way of salvation.  And on the other side, I cannot but see the lewd and sinful and worldly lives of the most part, and hear the lies whereby they amass wealth and turn men from the spirit of truth and holiness to delude them into believing that wilful sin can be committed without harm, and that purchase of a parchment is as good as repentance.  That do I see and hear.  And therewith my master Lucas and Dan Tindall, and those of the new light, declare that all has been false even from the very outset, and that all the pomp and beauty is but Satan’s bait, and that to believe in Christ alone is all that needs to justify us, casting all the rest aside.  All seemed a mist, and I was swayed hither and thither till the more I read and thought, the greater was the fog.  And this—I know not whether I told it to yonder good and holy doctor, or whether he knew it, for his eyes seemed to see into me, and he told me that he had felt and thought much the same.  But on that one great truth, that faith in the Passion is salvation, is the Church built, though sinful men have hidden it by their errors and lies as befell before among the Israelites, whose law, like ours, was divine.  Whatever is entrusted to man, he said, will become stained, soiled, and twisted, though the power of the Holy Spirit will strive to renew it.  And such an outpouring of cleansing and renewing power is, he saith, abroad in our day.  When he was a young man, this good father, so he said, hoped great things, and did his best to set forth the truth, both at Oxford and here, as indeed he hath ever done, he and the good Doctor Erasmus striving to turn men’s eyes back to the simplicity of God’s Word rather than to the arguments and deductions of the schoolmen.  And for the abuses of evil priests that have sprung up, my Lord Cardinal sought the Legatine Commission from our holy father at Rome to deal with them.  But Dr. Colet saith that there are other forces at work, and he doubteth greatly whether this same cleansing can be done without some great and terrible rending and upheaving, that may even split the Church as it were asunder—since judgment surely awaiteth such as will not be reformed.  But, quoth he, ‘our Mother-Church is God’s own Church and I will abide by her to the end, as the means of oneness with my Lord and Head, and do thou the same, my son, for thou art like to be more sorely tried than will a frail old elder like me, who would fain say his Nunc Dimittis, if such be the Lord’s will, ere the foundations be cast down.’”

Ambrose had gone on rehearsing all these words with the absorption of one to whom they were everything, till it occurred to him to wonder that Stephen had listened to so much with patience and assent, and then, looking at the position of head and hands, he perceived that his brother was asleep, and came to a sudden halt.  This roused Stephen to say, “Eh?  What?  The Dean, will he do aught for thee?”

“Yea,” said Ambrose, recollecting that there was little use in returning to the perplexities which Stephen could not enter into.  “He deemed that in this mood of mine, yea, and as matters now be at the universities, I had best not as yet study there for the priesthood.  But he said he would commend me to a friend whose life would better show me how the new gives life to the old than any man he wots of.”

“One of thy old doctors in barnacles, I trow,” said Stephen.

“Nay, verily.  We saw him t’other night perilling his life to stop the poor crazy prentices, and save the foreigners.  Dennet and our uncle saw him pleading for them with the King.”

“What!  Sir Thomas More?”

“Ay, no other.  He needs a clerk for his law matters, and the Dean said he would speak of me to him.  He is to sup at the Deanery to-morrow, and I am to be in waiting to see him.  I shall go with a lighter heart now that thou art beyond the clutches of the captain of Newgate.”

“Speak no more of that!” said Stephen, with a shudder.  “Would that I could forget it!”

In truth Stephen’s health had suffered enough to change the bold, high-spirited, active had, so that he hardly knew himself.  He was quite incapable of work all the next day, and Mistress Headley began to dread that he had brought home jail fever, and insisted on his being inspected by the barber-surgeon, Todd, who proceeded to bleed the patient, in order, as he said, to carry off the humours contracted in the prison.  He had done the same by Jasper Hope, and by Giles, but he followed the treatment up with better counsel, namely, that the lads should all be sent out of the City to some farm where they might eat curds and whey, until their strength should be restored.  Thus they would be out of reach of the sweating sickness which was already in some of the purlieus of St. Katharine’s Docks, and must be specially dangerous in their lowered condition.

Master Hope came in just after this counsel had been given.  He had a sister married to the host of a large prosperous inn near Windsor, and he proposed to send not only Jasper but Stephen thither, feeling how great a debt of gratitude he owed to the lad.  Remembering well the good young Mistress Streatfield, and knowing that the Antelope was a large old house of excellent repute, where she often lodged persons of quality attending on the court or needing country air, Master Headley added Giles to the party at his own expense, and wished also to send Dennet for greater security, only neither her grandmother nor Mrs. Hope could leave home.

It ended, however, in Perronel Randall being asked to take charge of the whole party, including Aldonza.  That little damsel had been in a manner confided to her both by the Dean of St. Paul’s and by Tibble Steelman—and indeed the motherly woman, after nursing and soothing her through her first despair at the loss of her father, was already loving her heartily, and was glad to give her a place in the home which Ambrose was leaving on being made an attendant on Sir Thomas More.

For the interview at the Deanery was satisfactory.  The young man, after a good supper, enlivened by the sweet singing of some chosen pupils of St. Paul’s school, was called up to where the Dean sat, and with him, the man of the peculiarly sweet countenance, with the noble and deep expression, yet withal, something both tender and humorous in it.

They made him tell his whole life, and asked many questions about Abenali, specially about the fragment of Arabic scroll which had been clutched in his hand even as he lay dying.  They much regretted never having known of his existence till too late.  “Jewels lie before the unheeding!” said More.  Then Ambrose was called on to show a specimen of his own penmanship, and to write from Sir Thomas’s dictation in English and in Latin.  The result was that he was engaged to act as one of the clerks Sir Thomas employed in his occupations alike as lawyer, statesman, and scholar.

“Methinks I have seen thy face before,” said Sir Thomas, looking keenly at him.  “I have beheld those black eyes, though with a different favour.”

Ambrose blushed deeply.  “Sir, it is but honest to tell you that my mother’s brother is jester to my Lord Cardinal.”

“Quipsome Hal Merriman!  Patch as the King calleth him!” exclaimed Sir Thomas.  “A man I have ever thought wore the motley rather from excess, than infirmity, of wit.”

“Nay, sir, so please you, it was his good heart that made him a jester,” said Ambrose, explaining the story of Randall and his Perronel in a few words, which touched the friends a good deal, and the Dean remembered that she was in charge of the little Moresco girl.  He lost nothing by dealing thus openly with his new master, who promised to keep his secret for him, then gave him handsel of his salary, and bade him collect his possessions, and come to take up his abode in the house of the More family at Chelsea.

He would still often see his brother in the intervals of attending Sir Thomas to the courts of law, but the chief present care was to get the boys into purer air, both to expedite their recovery and to ensure them against being dragged into the penitential company who were to ask for their lives on the 22nd of May, consisting of such of the prisoners who could still stand or go—for jail-fever was making havoc among them, and some of the better-conditioned had been released by private interest.  The remainder, not more than half of the original two hundred and seventy-eight, were stripped to their shirts, had halters hung round their necks, and then, roped together as before, were driven through the streets to Westminster, where the King sat enthroned.  There, looking utterly miserable, they fell on their knees before him, and received his pardon for their misdemeanours.  They returned to their masters, and so ended that Ill May-day, which was the longer remembered because one Churchill, a ballad-monger in St. Paul’s Churchyard, indited a poem on it, wherein he swelled the number of prentices to two thousand, and of the victims to two hundred.  Will Wherry, who escaped from among the prisoners very forlorn, was recommended by Ambrose to the work of a carter at the Dragon, which he much preferred to printing.

CHAPTER XIX

AT THE ANTELOPE

“Say, Father Thames, for thou hast seen   Full many a sprightly race,Disporting on thy margent green,   The paths of pleasure trace.”—Gray.

Master Hope took all the guests by boat to Windsor, and very soon the little party at the Antelope was in a state of such perfect felicity as became a proverb with them all their lives afterwards.  It was an inn wherein to take one’s ease, a large hostel full of accommodation for man and horse, with a big tapestried room of entertainment below, where meals were taken, with an oriel window with a view of the Round Tower, and above it a still more charming one, known as the Red Rose, because one of the Dukes of Somerset had been wont to lodge there.  The walls were tapestried with the story of St. Genoveva of Brabant, fresh and new on Mrs. Streatfield’s marriage; there was a huge bed with green curtains of that dame’s own work, where one might have said

“Above, below, the rose of snow,Twined with her blushing foe we spread.”

so as to avoid all offence.  There was also a cupboard or sideboard of the choicer plate belonging to the establishment, and another awmry containing appliances for chess and backgammon, likewise two large chairs, several stools, and numerous chests.

This apartment was given up to Mistress Randall and the two girls, subject however to the chance of turning out for any very distinguished guests.  The big bed held all three, and the chamber was likewise their sitting-room, though they took their meals down stairs, and joined the party in the common room in the evening whenever they were not out of doors, unless there were guests whom Perronel did not think desirable company for her charges.  Stephen and Giles were quartered in a small room known as the Feathers, smelling so sweet of lavender and woodruff that Stephen declared it carried him back to the Forest.  Mrs. Streatfield would have taken Jasper to tend among her children, but the boy could not bear to be without Stephen, and his brother advised her to let it be so, and not try to make a babe of him again.

The guest-chamber below stairs opened at one end into the innyard, a quadrangle surrounded with stables, outhouses, and offices, with a gallery running round to give access to the chambers above, where, when the Court was at Windsor, two or three great men’s trains of retainers might be crowded together.

One door, however, in the side of the guest-chamber had steps down to an orchard, full of apple and pear trees in their glory of pink bud and white blossom, borders of roses, gillyflowers, and lilies of the valley running along under the grey walls.  There was a broad space of grass near the houses, whence could be seen the Round Tower of the Castle looking down in protection, while the background of the view was filled up with a mass of the foliage of Windsor forest, in the spring tints.

Stephen never thought of its being beautiful, but he revelled in the refreshment of anything so like home, and he had nothing to wish for but his brother, and after all he was too contented and happy even to miss him much.

Master Streatfield was an elderly man, fat and easygoing, to whom talking seemed rather a trouble than otherwise, though he was very good-natured.  His wife was a merry, lively, active woman, who had been handed over to him by her father like a piece of Flanders cambric, but who never seemed to regret her position, managed men and maids, farm and guests, kept perfect order without seeming to do so, and made great friends with Perronel, never guessing that she had been one of the strolling company, who, nine or ten years before, had been refused admission to the Antelope, then crowded with my Lord of Oxford’s followers.

At first, it was enough for the prentices to spend most of their time in lying about on the grass under the trees.  Giles, who was in the best condition, exerted himself so far as to try to learn chess from Aldonza, who seemed to be a proficient in the game, and even defeated the good-natured burly parson who came every evening to the Antelope, to imbibe slowly a tankard of ale, and hear any news there stirring.

She and Giles were content to spend hours over her instructions in chess on that pleasant balcony in the shade of the house.  Though really only a year older than Dennet Headley, she looked much more, and was so in all her ways.  It never occurred to her to run childishly wild with delight in the garden and orchard as did Dennet, who, with little five-years-old Will Streatfield for her guide and playfellow, rushed about hither and thither, making acquaintance with hens and chickens, geese and goslings, seeing cows and goats milked, watching butter churned, bringing all manner of animal and vegetable curiosities to Stephen to be named and explained, and enjoying his delight in them, a delight which after the first few days became more and more vigorous.

By and by there was punting and fishing on the river, strawberry gathering in the park, explorations of the forest, expeditions of all sorts and kinds, Jasper being soon likewise well enough to share in them.  The boys and girls were in a kind of fairy hand under Perronel’s kind wing, the wandering habits of whose girlhood made the freedom of the country far more congenial to her than it would have been to any regular Londoner.

Stephen was the great oracle, of course, as to the deer respectfully peeped at in the park, or the squirrels, the hares and rabbits, in the forest, and the inhabitants of the stream above or below.  It was he who secured and tamed the memorials of their visit—two starlings for Dennet and Aldonza.  The birds were to be taught to speak, and to do wonders of all kinds, but Aldonza’s bird was found one morning dead, and Giles consoled her by the promise of something much bigger, and that would talk much better.  Two days after he brought her a young jackdaw.  Aldonza clasped her hands and admired its glossy back and queer blue eye, and was in transports when it uttered something between “Jack” and “good lack.”  But Dennet looked in scorn at it, and said, “That’s a bird tamed already.  He didn’t catch it.  He only bought it!  I would have none such!  An ugsome great thieving bird!”

“Nay now, Mistress Dennet,” argued Perronel.  “Thou hast thy bird, and Alice has lost hers.  It is not meet to grudge it to her.”

“I!  Grudge it to her!” said Dennet, with a toss of the head.  “I grudge her nought from Giles Headley, so long as I have my Goldspot that Stephen climbed the wall for, his very self.”

And Dennet turned majestically away with her bird—Goldspot only in the future—perched on her finger; while Perronel shook her head bodingly.

But they were all children still, and Aldonza was of a nature that was slow to take offence, while it was quite true that Dennet had been free from jealousy of the jackdaw, and only triumphant in Stephen’s prowess and her own starling.

The great pleasure of all was a grand stag-hunt, got up for the diversion of the French ambassadors, who had come to treat for the espousals of the infant Princess Mary with the baby “Dolphyne.”  Probably these illustrious personages did not get half the pleasure out of it that the Antelope party had.  Were they not, by special management of a yeoman pricker who had recognised in Stephen a kindred spirit, and had a strong admiration for Mistress Randall, placed where there was the best possible view of hunters, horses, and hounds, lords and ladies, King and ambassadors, in their gorgeous hunting trim?  Did not Stephen, as a true verdurer’s son, interpret every note on the horn, and predict just what was going to happen, to the edification of all his hearers?  And when the final rush took place, did not the prentices, with their gowns rolled up, dart off headlong in pursuit?  Dennet entertained some hope that Stephen would again catch some runaway steed, or come to the King’s rescue in some way or other, but such chances did not happen every day.  Nay, Stephen did not even follow up the chase to the death, but left Giles to do that, turning back forsooth because that little Jasper thought fit to get tired and out of breath, and could not find his way back alone.  Dennet was quite angry with Stephen and turned her back on him, when Giles came in all glorious, at having followed up staunchly all day, having seen the fate of the poor stag, and having even beheld the King politely hand the knife to Monsieur de Montmorency to give the first stroke to the quarry!

That was the last exploit.  There was to be a great tilting match in honour of the betrothal, and Master Alderman Headley wanted his apprentices back again, and having been satisfied by a laborious letter from Dennet, sent per carrier, that they were in good health, despatched orders by the same means, that they were to hire horses at the Antelope and return—Jasper coming back at the same time, though his aunt would fain have kept him longer.

Women on a journey almost always rode double, and the arrangement came under debate.  Perronel, well accustomed to horse, ass, or foot, undertook to ride behind the child, as she called Jasper, who—as a born Londoner—knew nothing of horses, though both the other prentices did.  Giles, who, in right of his name, kindred, and expectations, always held himself a sort of master, declared that “it was more fitting that Stephen should ride before Mistiness Dennet.”  And to this none of the party made any objection, except that Perronel privately observed to him that she should have thought he would have preferred the company of his betrothed.