The Armourer's Prentices

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I must—I must hear it again!” exclaimed Ambrose.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Surely you knew that he was foreman.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Ay, that’s all very well for you, who are certain of a great man’s house.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER VII

YORK HOUSE

“Then hath he servants five or six score,Some behind and some before;A marvellous great companyOf which are lords and gentlemen,With many grooms and yeomenAnd also knaves among them.”Contemporary Poem on Wolsey.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Was he a yeoman of the guard, or in attendance on one of my lord’s nobles in waiting?”

“We thought he had been a yeoman,” said Ambrose.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“At Salisbury, good Merryman.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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