The Armourer’s Prentices by Charlotte Mary Yonge (page 2)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“A mighty stir about a mere chance,” muttered Giles.

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

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

“What mean ye by this insolence, you beggars’ brats picked up on the heath?”

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

Three voices spoke at once.

“They were insolent.”

“He reviled our birth.”

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

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

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

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

“Yea, sir, and thanks; but we can give no cause for being called beggars nor beggars’ brats.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I trow not,” dryly observed one of the guests.

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER VI. A SUNDAY IN THE CITY

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

KEBLE.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“But surely this is not the truth?”

“‘Tis mighty like it, sir, though it might be spoken in a more seemly fashion.”

“What’s this?” demanded Ambrose. “‘Tis a noble house.”

“That’s the Bishop’s palace, sir–a man that hath much to answer for.”

“Liveth he so ill a life then?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Surely you knew that he was foreman.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER VII. YORK HOUSE

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

Contemporary Poem on Wolsey.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“At Salisbury, good Merryman.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Maybe he went by the name of Shirley,” added Stephen, “’tis where his home was.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Oh, take us to him, good–good jester,” cried Ambrose. “We are young and strong. We will work for him.”

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

“Of course,” cried Ambrose. “He is our mother’s brother. We must care for him.”

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

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

“But how shall we know him?”

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

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

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

CHAPTER VIII. QUIPSOME HAL

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

SHAKESPEARE.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ambrose looked up into a pair of dark eyes, and exclaimed “Stevie, Stevie, ’tis he. ‘Tis uncle Hal.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Shoveller–what, a Shoveller of Cranbury? How fell ye in with him?”

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

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

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

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

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

“Yes, lads. Can you brook the thought!–Harry Randall is the poor fool!”

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

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

“O no,” said Stephen. “She always thought thou–thou hadst some high preferment in–“

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

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

“Methinks ’twere better than this present,” said Stephen rather gruffly.

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

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

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

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

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

“O uncle! Father would have honoured thee!” cried Stephen.

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

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

“I’d forgotten that,” said Stephen.

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

“No,” said Stephen, emphatically.

“Your father left you twenty crowns apiece?”

“Ay, but John hath all save four of them.”

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

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

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

“I had liefer be a man-at-arms.”

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

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

“Whittington was a gentleman,” said Ambrose.

“I am sick of Whittington,” muttered Stephen.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“And what wilt thou do?”

“I wish to be a scholar,” said Ambrose.

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

“I had rather study than thrive,” said Ambrose rather dreamily.

“He wotteth not what he saith,” cried Stephen.

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

“The Dean of St. Paul’s!” said Ambrose, experiencing a shock.

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

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

“Could I get admittance to that school?” exclaimed Ambrose.

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER IX. ARMS SPIRITUAL AND TEMPORAL

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

CHAUCER.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Come hither, sir,” said the foreman, muttering to himself, “Methought ’twas working in him! The leaven! the leaven!”

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

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

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

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

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

Tibble nodded.

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

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

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

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

“Then they are taught this same doctrine?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Yea,” said Tibble, “into the glorious freedom of God’s children.”

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

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

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

“Fond inventions of pardon-mongers,” muttered Tibble.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I should dwell among books!”

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

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

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

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

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

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