Charlotte M. Yonge

“ Stephen stared at him.
“Hear uncle Hal talk of monks whom he sees at my Lord Cardinal’s table! What holiness is there among them? Men, that have vowed to renounce all worldly and carnal things flaunt like peacocks and revel like swine—my Lord Cardinal with his silver pillars foremost of them! He poor and mortified! ’Tis verily as our uncle saith, he plays the least false and shameful part there!”
“Ambrose, Ambrose, thou wilt be distraught, poring over these matters that were never meant for lads like us! Do but come and drive them out for once with mirth and good fellowship.” ”

“ Nay, old Spring, thou shalt share thy master’s fortunes, changed though they be. Oh, father! father! didst thou guess how it would be with thy boys!” And throwing himself on the grass, he hid his face against the dog and sobbed.
“Come, Stephen, Stephen; ’tis time to play the man! What are we to do out in the world if you weep and wail?”
“She might have let us stay for the month’s mind,” was heard from Stephen.
“Ay, and though we might be more glad to go, we might carry bitterer thoughts along with us. Better be done with it at once, say I.”
“There would still be the Forest! ”

“ They cast in their lot with their own people, and that their bones may lie bleaching on the mountains is the best lot that can have befallen the children of my youth and hope. The house of Miguel Abenali is desolate and childless, save for the little maiden who sits by my hearth in the land of my exile! Why should I guard it longer for him who may wed her, and whom I may never behold? The will of Heaven be done! Young man, if I bestow this knowledge on thee, wilt thou swear to be as a father to my daughter, and to care for her as thine own? ”

“ He knew many in my Lord of York’s house—as many as a man was like to know where there was a matter of two hundred folk between clerks and soldiers, he had often crushed a pottle with them. No; he had never heard of one called Randall, neither in hat nor cowl, but he knew more of them by face than by name, and more by by name than surname or christened name. He was certainly not the archer who had brought a token for Mistress Birkenholt, and his comrades all avouched equal ignorance on the subject. ”

“ She shook her head. “The less you deal with Hal Randall the better,” she said. “Come now, lads, be advised and go no farther than Winchester, where Master Ambrose may get all the book-learning he is ever craving for, and you, Master Stevie, may prentice yourself to some good trade.”
“Prentice!” cried Stephen, scornfully.
“Ay, ay. As good blood as thine has been prenticed,” returned Joan. “Better so than be a cut-throat sword-and-buckler fellow, ever slaying some one else or getting thyself slain—a terror to all peaceful folk. ”

“ The only hope that Ambrose or his good master could devise for poor Randall was that Sir Thomas should watch his opportunity and beg the fool from the King, who might part with him as a child gives away the once coveted toy that has failed in its hands; but the request would need circumspection, for all had already felt the change that had taken place in the temper of the King since Henry had resolutely undertaken that the wrong should be the right; and Ambrose could not but dread the effect of desperation on a man whose nature had in it a vein of impatient recklessness. ”

“ Here, Lord Cardinal—more, let the free pardon be drawn up for the two lads. And we will ourselves write to the Lord Mayor and to Norfolk that though they may work their will on the movers of the riot—that pestilent Lincoln and his sort—not a prentice lad shall be touched till our pleasure be known. There now, child, thou hast won the lives of thy lads, as thou callest them. Wilt thou rue the day, I marvel? Why cannot some of their mothers pluck up spirit and beg them off as thou hast done? ”

“ Is this same Stephen, the knight of the whistle and the bow, thy betrothed, and Giles thy brother?”
“Nay, your Grace,” said Dennet, hanging her head, “Giles Headley is my betrothed—that is, when his time is served, he will be—father sets great store by him, for he is the only one of our name to keep up the armoury, and he has a mother, Sir, a mother at Salisbury. But oh, Sir, Sir! Stephen is so good and brave a lad! He made in to save father from the robbers, and he draws the best bow in Cheapside, and he can grave steel as well as Tibble himself, and this is the whistle your Grace wots of.” ”

“ 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 single-stick 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Are ye from these parts, my fair lads?”
“We be journeying from the New Forest to London,” said Ambrose. “The poor dog heard the tumult, and leapt to your aid, sir, and we made after him.”
“’Twas the saints sent him!” was the fervent answer. “And” (with a lifting of the cap) “I hereby vow to St. Julian a hound of solid bronze a foot in length, with a collar of silver, to his shrine in St. Faith’s, in token of my deliverance in body and goods! To London are ye bound? Then will we journey on together!” ”

“ John Birkenholt, thou wast ever a lad of smooth tongue, but an thou, or madam here, think that thy brothers can be put forth from thy father’s door without their due before the good man be cold in his grave, and the Forest not ring with it, thou art mightily out in thy reckoning!”
“Peace, thou old hag; what matter is’t of thine?” began Mistress Maud, but again came the harsh laugh.
“Matter of mine! Why, whose matter should it be but mine, that have nursed all three of the lads, ay, and their father before them, besides four more that lie in the graveyard at Beaulieu? Rest their sweet souls! ”

“ Ha! ha!” and Quipsome Hal went off into such a laugh as might have betrayed his identity to any one more accustomed to the grimaces of his professional character, but which only infected the others with the same contagious merriment. “Come thou home now,” he said to Ambrose; “my good woman hath been in a mortal fright about thee, and would have me come out to seek after thee. Such are the women folk, Master Headley. Let them have but a lad to look after, and they’ll bleat after him like an old ewe that has lost her lamb.” ”

“ Nor hath she aught, poor maid, save yonder gold and pearl earrings, and a cross of gold that she says her father bade her never part with.”
“I pledged my word to her father,” said Tibble, “that I would have a care of her. I have not cared to hoard, having none to come after me, but if a matter of twenty or five-and-twenty marks would avail—”
“Wherefore not take her yourself?” said Perronel, as he stood aghast. “She is a maid of sweet obedient conditions, trained by a scholar even like yourself. She would make your chamber fair and comfortable, and tend you dutifully.” ”

“ They slept in the hostel at Dogmersfield where the Dragon mark and the badge of the Armourers’ Company had first appeared before them. They found the very tree where the alderman had been tied, and beneath which Spring lay buried, while little Giles gazed with ecstatic, almost religious veneration, and Ambrose seemed to draw in new life with the fresh air of the heath, now becoming rich with crimson bells. They visited Hyde Abbey, and the well-clothed, well-mounted travellers received a better welcome than had fallen to the lot of the hungry lads. ”

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

“ A boy! Oh, Heavens! would it be too late? Who was it? They were still too far off to see. They might only be cruelly holding out hope to one of the doomed.
The pursuivant shouted aloud—“In the King’s name, Hold!” He lifted Dennet on his shoulder, and bade her wave her parchment. An overpowering roar arose. “A pardon! a pardon! God save the King!”
Every hand seemed to be forwarding the pursuivant and the child, and it was Giles Headley, who, loosed from the hold of the executioner, stared wildly about him, like one distraught. ”

“ Ambrose’s head was more in Sir Thomas’s books than in real life at all times, or he would long ago have inferred something—from the jackdaw’s favourite phrase—from Giles’s modes of haunting his steps, and making him the bearer of small tokens—an orange, a simnel cake, a bag of walnuts or almonds to Mistress Aldonza, and of the smiles, blushes, and thanks with which she greeted them. ”

“ If we cannot get into our own tent again, we can mingle with the outskirts, and learn how the day is going, and how our lances and breastplates have stood where the knaves at the Eagle have gone like reeds and egg-shells—just as I threw George Bates, the prentice at the Eagle yesterday, in a wrestling match at the butts with the trick old Diggory taught me. ”

“ Things were moderately quiet around Saint Paul’s, but as they came into Warwick Lane they heard fresh shouts and wild cries, and at the archway leading to the inner yard they could see that there was a huge bonfire in the midst of the court—of what composed they could not see for the howling figures that exulted round it.
“George Bates, the villain!” cried Stephen, as his enemy in exulting ferocious delight was revealed for a moment throwing a book on the fire, and shouting, “Hurrah! there’s for the old sorcerer, there’s for the heretics!” ”

“ 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. ”

“ Brother Cornelis knows not a word of English. Dost thou owe aught to any man?”
“Nay, nay—not that,” said Stephen, drawn in his trouble and perplexity to open his heart to this incongruous confidant, “but, sir, sir, which be the worst, to break my pledge to my master, or to run into a trial which—which will last from day to day, and may be too much for me—yea, and for another—at last?”
The colour, the trembling of limb, the passion of voice, revealed enough to Lucas to make him say, in the voice of one who, dried up as he was, had once proved the trial, “’Tis love, thou wouldst say?” ”

“ In the afternoon, Ambrose came to the Dragon court. Even as Stephen figured now as a handsome prosperous young freeman of the City, Ambrose looked well in the sober black apparel and neat ruff of a lawyer’s clerk—clerk indeed to the first lawyer in the kingdom, for the news had spread before him that Sir Thomas More had become Lord Chancellor.
“Thou art come to bear us word of thy promotion—for thy master’s is thine own,” said the alderman heartily as he entered, shaking hands with him. “Never was the Great Seal in better hands.” ”

“ He gave a kind of embrace, while she gave a kind of gasp of “Welcome, sir,” and glanced somewhat reproachfully at Stephen for not having given her more warning. The cause of her dismay was plain as the Captain, giving her no time to precede him, strode into the little chamber, where Hal Randall, without his false beard or hair, and in his parti-coloured hose, was seated by the cupboard-like bed, assisting old Martin Fulford to take his mid-day meal.
“Be this thine husband, girl? Ha! ha! He’s more like a jolly friar come in to make thee merry when the good man is out!” ”

“ Meanwhile the two youths were made much of by the warriors, Stephen’s dexterity with the bow and back-sword were shown off and lauded, Giles’s strength was praised, and all manner of new feats were taught them, all manner of stories told them; and the shrinking of well-trained young citizens from these lawless men “full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,” and some very truculent-looking, had given way to judicious flattery, and to the attractions of adventure and of a free life, where wealth and honour awaited the bold. ”

“ And like the wolf twitting the mastiff with his chain, the soldier was no sooner outside the door of the Dragon court before he began to express his wonder how a lad of mettle could put up with a flat cap, a blue gown, and the being at the beck and call of a greasy burgher, when a bold, handsome young knave like him might have the world before him and his stout pike. ”

“ And he covered his face with his hands.
“Come, come, my good child,” said Master Headley; “we will back to the place by times to-morrow when rogues hide and honest men walk abroad. Thou shalt bury thine hound, as befits a good warrior, on the battle-field. I would fain mark his points for the effigy we will frame, honest Tibble, for St. Julian. And mark ye, fellows, thou godson Giles, above all, who ’tis that boast of their valour, and who ’tis that be modest of speech. Yea, thanks, mine host. Let us to a chamber, and give us water to wash away soil of travel and of fray, and then to supper. ”