“Have a care, my Colet,” answered the yellow bearded foreigner; “thou art already in ill odour with those same men in authority; and though a Dean’s stall be fenced from the episcopal crook, yet there is a rod at Rome which can reach even thither.”
“I tell thee, dear Erasmus, thou art too timid; I were well content to leave house and goods, yea, to go to prison or to death, could I but bring home to one soul, for which Christ died, the truth and hope in every one of those prayers and creeds that our poor folk are taught to patter as a senseless charm.”
“These are strange times,” returned Erasmus. “Methinks yonder phantom, be he skeleton or angel, will have snatched both of us away ere we behold the full issue either of thy preachings, or my Greek Testament, or of our More’s Utopian images. Dost thou not feel as though we were like children who have set some mighty engine in motion, like the great water-wheels in my native home, which, whirled by the flowing streams of time and opinion, may break up the whole foundations, and destroy the oneness of the edifice?”
“It may be so,” returned Colet. “What read we? ‘The net brake’ even in the Master’s sight, while still afloat on the sea. It was only on the shore that the hundred and fifty-three, all good and sound, were drawn to His feet.”
“And,” returned Erasmus, “I see wherefore thou hast made thy children at St. Paul’s one hundred and fifty and three.”
The two friends were passing out. Their latter speeches had scarce been understood by Ambrose, even if he heard them, so full was he of conflicting feelings, now ready to cast himself before their feet, and entreat the Dean to help him to guidance, now withheld by bashfulness, unwillingness to interrupt, and ingenuous shame at appearing like an eavesdropper towards such dignified and venerable personages. Had he obeyed his first impulse, mayhap his career had been made safer and easier for him, but it was while shyness chained his limbs and tongue that the Dean and Erasmus quitted the chapel, and the opportunity of accosting them had slipped away.
Their half comprehended words had however decided him in the part he should take, making him sure that Colet was not controverting the formularies of the Church, but drawing out those meanings which in repetition by rote were well-nigh forgotten. It was as if his course were made clear to him.
He was determined to take the means which most readily presented themselves of hearing Colet; and leaving the chapel, he bent his steps to the Row which his book-loving eye had already marked. Flanking the great Cathedral on the north, was the row of small open stalls devoted to the sale of books, or “objects of devotion,” all so arranged that the open portion might be cleared, and the stock-in-trade locked up if not carried away. Each stall had its own sign, most of them sacred, such as the Lamb and Flag, the Scallop Shell, or some patron saint, but classical emblems were oddly intermixed, such as Minerva’s Ægis, Pegasus, and the Lyre of Apollo. The sellers, some middle-aged men, some lads, stretched out their arms with their wares to attract the passengers in the street, and did not fail to beset Ambrose. The more lively looked at his Lincoln green and shouted verses of ballads at him, fluttering broad sheets with verses on the lamentable fate of Jane Shore, or Fair Rosamond, the same woodcut doing duty for both ladies, without mercy to their beauty. The scholastic judged by his face and step that he was a student, and they flourished at him black-bound copies of Virgilius Maro, and of Tully’s Offices, while others, hoping that he was an incipient clerk, offered breviaries, missals or portuaries, with the Use of St. Paul’s, or of Sarum, or mayhap St. Austin’s Confessions. He made his way along, with his eye diligently heedful of the signs, and at last recognised the Winged Staff, or caduceus of Hermes, over a stall where a couple of boys in blue caps and gowns and yellow stockings were making a purchase of a small, grave-looking, elderly but bright cheeked man, whose yellow hair and beard were getting intermingled with grey. They were evidently those St. Paul’s School boys whom Ambrose envied so much, and as they finished their bargaining and ran away together, Ambrose advanced with a salutation, asked if he did not see Master Lucas Hansen, and gave him the note with the commendations of Tibble Steelman the armourer.
He was answered with a ready nod and “yea, yea,” as the old man opened the billet and cast his eyes over it; then scanning Ambrose from head to foot, said with some amazement, “But you are of gentle blood, young sir.”
“I am,” said Ambrose; “but gentle blood needs at times to work for bread, and Tibble let me hope that I might find both livelihood for the body and for the soul with you, sir.”
“Is it so?” asked the printer, his face lighting up. “Art thou willing to labour and toil, and give up hope of fee and honour, if so thou mayst win the truth?”
Ambrose folded his hands with a gesture of earnestness, and Lucas Hansen said, “Bless thee, my son! Methinks I can aid thee in thy quest, so thou canst lay aside,” and here his voice grew sharper and more peremptory, “all thy gentleman’s airs and follies, and serve—ay, serve and obey.”
“I trust so,” returned Ambrose; “my brother is even now becoming prentice to Master Giles Headley, and we hope to live as honest men by the work of our hands and brains.”
“I forgot that you English herren are not so puffed up with pride and scorn like our Dutch nobles,” returned the printer. “Canst live sparingly, and lie hard, and see that thou keepst the house clean, not like these English swine?”
“I hope so,” said Ambrose, smiling; “but I have an uncle and aunt, and they would have me lie every night at their house beside the Temple gardens.”
“What is thine uncle?”
“He hath a post in the meiné of my Lord Archbishop of York,” said Ambrose, blushing and hesitating a little. “He cometh to and fro to his wife, who dwells with her old father, doing fine lavender’s work for the lawyer folk therein.”
It was somewhat galling that this should be the most respectable occupation that could be put forward, but Lucas Hansen was evidently reassured by it. He next asked whether Ambrose could read Latin, putting a book into his hand as he did so; Ambrose read and construed readily, explaining that he had been trained at Beaulieu.
“That is well!” said the printer; “and hast thou any Greek?”
“Only the alphabeta,” said Ambrose, “I made that out from a book at Beaulieu, but Father Simon knew no more, and there was nought to study from.”
“Even so,” replied Hansen, “but little as thou knowst ’tis as much as I can hope for from any who will aid me in my craft. ’Tis I that, as thou hast seen, furnish for the use of the children at the Dean’s school of St. Paul’s. The best and foremost scholars of them are grounded in their Greek, that being the tongue wherein the Holy Gospels were first writ. Hitherto I have had to get me books for their use from Holland, whither they are brought from Basle, but I have had sent me from Hamburg a fount of type of the Greek character, whereby I hope to print at home, the accidence, and mayhap the Dialogues of Plato, and it might even be the sacred Gospel itself, which the great Doctor, Master Erasmus, is even now collating from the best authorities in the universities.”
Ambrose’s eyes kindled with unmistakable delight. “You have the accidence!” he exclaimed. “Then could I study the tongue even while working for you! Sir, I would do my best! It is the very opportunity I seek.”
“Fair and softly,” said the printer with something of a smile. “Thou art new to cheapening and bargaining, my fair lad. Thou hast spoken not one word of the wage.”
“I recked not of that,” said Ambrose. “’Tis true, I may not burthen mine uncle and aunt, but verily, sir, I would live on the humblest fare that will keep body and soul together so that I may have such an opportunity.”
“How knowst thou what the opportunity may be?” returned Lucas, drily. “Thou art but a babe! Some one should have a care of thee. If I set thee to stand here all day and cry what d’ye lack? or to carry bales of books twixt this and Warwick Inner Yard, thou wouldst have no ground to complain.”
“Nay, sir,” returned Ambrose, “I wot that Tibble Steelman would never send me to one who would not truly give me what I need.”
“Tibble Steelman is verily one of the few who are both called and chosen,” replied Lucas, “and I think thou art the same so far as green youth may be judged, since thou art one who will follow the word into the desert, and never ask for the loaves and fishes. Nevertheless, I will take none advantage of thy youth and zeal, but thou shalt first behold what thou shalt have to do for me, and then if it still likes thee, I will see thy kindred. Hast no father?”
Ambrose explained, and at that moment Master Hansen’s boy made his appearance, returning from an errand; the stall was left in his charge, while the master took Ambrose with him into the precincts of what had once been the splendid and hospitable mansion of the great king-maker, Warwick, but was now broken up into endless little tenements with their courts and streets, though the baronial ornaments and the arrangement still showed what the place had been.
Entering beneath a wide archway, still bearing the sign of the Bear and Ragged Staff, Lucas led the way into what must have been one of the courts of offices, for it was surrounded with buildings and sheds of different heights and sizes, and had on one side a deep trough of stone, fed by a series of water-taps, intended for the use of the stables. The doors of one of these buildings was unlocked by Master Hansen, and Ambrose found himself in what had once perhaps been part of a stable, but had been partitioned off from the rest. There were two stalls, one serving the Dutchman for his living room, the other for his workshop. In one corner stood a white earthenware stove—so new a spectacle to the young forester that he supposed it to be the printing press. A table, shiny with rubbing, a wooden chair, a couple of stools, a few vessels, mirrors for brightness, some chests and corner cupboards, a bed shutting up like a box and likewise highly polished, completed the furniture, all arranged with the marvellous orderliness and neatness of the nation. A curtain shut off the opening to the other stall, where stood a machine with a huge screw, turned by leverage. Boxes of type and piles of paper surrounded it, and Ambrose stood and looked at it with a sort of awe-struck wonder and respect as the great fount of wisdom. Hansen showed him what his work would be, in setting up type, and by and by correcting after the first proof. The machine could only print four pages at a time, and for this operation the whole strength of the establishment was required. Moreover, Master Hansen bound, as well as printed his books. Ambrose was by no means daunted. As long as he might read as well as print, and while he had Sundays at St. Paul’s to look to, he asked no more—except indeed that his gentle blood stirred at the notion of acting salesman in the book-stall, and Master Hansen assured him with a smile that Will Wherry, the other boy, would do that better than either of them, and that he would be entirely employed here.
The methodical master insisted however on making terms with the boy’s relations; and with some misgivings on Ambrose’s part, the two—since business hours were almost over—walked together to the Temple and to the little house, where Perronel was ironing under her window.
Ambrose need not have doubted. The Dutch blood on either side was stirred; and the good housewife commanded the little printer’s respect as he looked round on a kitchen as tidy as if it were in his own country. And the bargain was struck that Ambrose Birkenholt should serve Master Hansen for his meals and two pence a week, while he was to sleep at the little house of Mistress Randall, who would keep his clothes and linen in order.
And thus it was that both Ambrose and Stephen Birkenholt had found their vocations for the present, and both were fervent in them. Master Headley pshawed a little when he heard that Ambrose had engaged himself to a printer and a foreigner; and when he was told it was to a friend of Tibble’s, only shook his head, saying that Tib’s only fault was dabbling in matters of divinity, as if a plain man could not be saved without them! However, he respected the lad for having known his own mind and not hung about in idleness, and he had no opinion of clerks, whether monks or priests. Indeed, the low esteem in which the clergy as a class were held in London was one of the very evil signs of the times. Ambrose was invited to dine and sup at the Dragon court every Sunday and holiday, and he was glad to accept, since the hospitality was so free, and he thus was able to see his brother and Tibble; besides that, it prevented him from burthening Mistress Randall, whom he really liked, though he could not see her husband, either in his motley or his plain garments, without a shudder of repulsion.
Ambrose found that setting up type had not much more to do with the study of new books than Stephen’s turning the grindstone had with fighting in the lists; and the mistakes he made in spelling from right to left, and in confounding the letters, made him despair, and prepare for any amount of just indignation from his master; but he found on the contrary that Master Hansen had never had a pupil who made so few blunders on the first trial, and augured well of him from such a beginning. Paper was too costly, and pressure too difficult, for many proofs to be struck off, but Hansen could read and correct his type as it stood, and assured Ambrose that practice would soon give him the same power; and the correction was thus completed, when Will Wherry, a big, stout fellow, came in to dinner—the stall being left during that time, as nobody came for books during the dinner-hour, and Hansen, having an understanding with his next neighbour, by which they took turns to keep guard against thieves.
The master and the two lads dined together on the contents of a cauldron, where pease and pork had been simmering together on the stove all the morning. Their strength was then united to work the press and strike off a sheet, which the master scanned, finding only one error in it. It was a portion of Lilly’s Grammar, and Ambrose regarded it with mingled pride and delight, though he longed to go further into those deeper revelations for the sake of which he had come here.
Master Hansen then left the youths to strike off a couple of hundred sheets, after which they were to wash the types and re-arrange the letters in the compartments in order, whilst he returned to the stall. The customers requiring his personal attention were generally late ones. When all this was accomplished, and the pot put on again in preparation for supper, the lads might use the short time that remained as they would, and Hansen himself showed Ambrose a shelf of books concealed by a blue curtain, whence he might read.
Will Wherry showed unconcealed amazement that this should be the taste of his companion. He himself hated the whole business, and would never have adopted it, but that he had too many brothers for all to take to the water on the Thames, and their mother was too poor to apprentice them, and needed the small weekly pay the Dutchman gave him. He seemed a good-natured, dull fellow, whom no doubt Hansen had hired for the sake of the strong arms, developed by generations of oarsmen upon the river. What he specially disliked was that his master was a foreigner. The whole court swarmed with foreigners, he said, with the utmost disgust, as if they were noxious insects. They made provisions dear, and undersold honest men, and he wondered the Lord Mayor did not see to it and drive them out. He did not so much object to the Dutch, but the Spaniards—no words could express his horror of them.
By and by, Ambrose going out to fetch some water from the conduit, found standing by it a figure entirely new to him. It was a young girl of some twelve or fourteen years old, in the round white cap worn by all of her age and sex; but from beneath it hung down two thick plaits of the darkest hair he had ever seen, and though the dress was of the ordinary dark serge with a coloured apron, it was put on with an air that made it look like some strange and beautiful costume on the slender, lithe, little form. The vermilion apron was further trimmed with a narrow border of white, edged again with deep blue, and it chimed in with the bright coral earrings and necklace. As Ambrose came forward the creature tried to throw a crimson handkerchief over her head, and ran into the shelter of another door, but not before Ambrose had seen a pair of large dark eyes so like those of a terrified fawn that they seemed to carry him back to the Forest. Going back amazed, he asked his companion who the girl he had seen could have been.
Will stared. “I trow you mean the old blackamoor sword-cutler’s wench. He is one of those pestilent strangers. An ’Ebrew Jew who worships Mahound and is too bad for the Spanish folk themselves.”
This rather startled Ambrose, though he knew enough to see that the accusations could not both be true, but he forgot it in the delight, when Will pronounced the work done, of drawing back the curtain and feasting his eyes upon the black backs of the books, and the black-letter brochures that lay by them. There were scarcely thirty, yet he gloated on them as on an inexhaustible store, while Will, whistling wonder at his taste, opined that since some one was there to look after the stove, and the iron pot on it, he might go out and have a turn at ball with Hob and Martin.
Ambrose was glad to be left to go over his coming feast. There was Latin, English, and, alas! baffling Dutch. High or Low it was all the same to him. What excited his curiosity most was the Enchiridion Militis Christiani of Erasmus—in Latin of course, and that he could easily read—but almost equally exciting was a Greek and Latin vocabulary; or again, a very thin book in which he recognised the New Testament in the Vulgate. He had heard chapters of it read from the graceful stone pulpit overhanging the refectory at Beaulieu, and, of course, the Gospels and Epistles at mass, but they had been read with little expression and no attention; and that Sunday’s discourse had filled him with eagerness to look farther; but the mere reading the titles of the books was pleasure enough for the day, and his master was at home before he had fixed his mind on anything. Perhaps this was as well, for Lucas advised him what to begin with, and how to divide his studies so as to gain a knowledge of the Greek, his great ambition, and also to read the Scripture.
The master was almost as much delighted as the scholar, and it was not till the curfew was beginning to sound that Ambrose could tear himself away. It was still daylight, and the door of the next dwelling was open. There, sitting on the ground cross-legged, in an attitude such as Ambrose had never seen, was a magnificent old man, with a huge long white beard, wearing, indeed, the usual dress of a Londoner of the lower class, but the gown flowed round him in a grand and patriarchal manner, corresponding with his noble, somewhat aquiline features; and behind him Ambrose thought he caught a glimpse of the shy fawn he had seen in the morning.
CHAPTER XI
AY DI ME GRENADA
“In sooth it was a thing to weep
If then as now the level plain
Beneath was spreading like the deep,
The broad unruffled main.
If like a watch-tower of the sun
Above, the Alpuxarras rose,
Streaked, when the dying day was done,
With evening’s roseate snows.”
Archbishop Trench.
When Mary Tudor, released by death from her first dreary marriage, contracted for her brother’s pleasure, had appeased his wrath at her second marriage made to please herself, Henry VIII. was only too glad to mark his assent by all manner of festivities; and English chroniclers, instead of recording battles and politics, had only to write of pageantries and tournaments during the merry May of the year 1515—a May, be it remembered, which, thanks to the old style, was at least ten days nearer to Midsummer than our present month.
How the two queens and all their court had gone a-maying on Shooter’s Hill, ladies and horses poetically disguised and labelled with sweet summer titles, was only a nine days’ wonder when the Birkenholts had come to London, but the approaching tournament at Westminster on the Whitsun holiday was the great excitement to the whole population, for, with all its faults, the Court of bluff King Hal was thoroughly genial, and every one, gentle and simple, might participate in his pleasures.
Seats were reserved at the lists for the city dignitaries and their families, and though old Mistress Headley professed that she ought to have done with such vanities, she could not forbear from going to see that her son was not too much encumbered with the care of little Dennet, and that the child herself ran into no mischief. Master Headley himself grumbled and sighed, but he put himself into his scarlet gown, holding that his presence was a befitting attention to the king, glad to gratify his little daughter, and not without a desire to see how his workmanship—good English ware—held out against “mail and plate of Milan steel,” the fine armour brought home from France by the new Duke of Suffolk. Giles donned his best in the expectation of sitting in the places of honour as one of the family, and was greatly disgusted when Kit Smallbones observed, “What’s all that bravery for? The tilting match quotha? Ha! ha! my young springald, if thou see it at all, thou must be content to gaze as thou canst from the armourers’ tent, if Tibble there chooses to be cumbered with a useless lubber like thee.”
“I always sat with my mother when there were matches at Clarendon,” muttered Giles, who had learnt at least that it was of no use to complain of Smallbones’ plain speaking.
“If folks cocker malapert lads at Sarum we know better here,” was the answer.
“I shall ask the master, my kinsman,” returned the youth.
But he got little by his move. Master Headley told him, not unkindly, for he had some pity for the spoilt lad, that not the Lord Mayor himself would take his own son with him while yet an apprentice. Tibble Steelman would indeed go to one of the attendants’ tents at the further end of the lists, where repairs to armour and weapons might be needed, and would take an assistant or two, but who they might be must depend on his own choice, and if Giles had any desire to go, he had better don his working dress.
In fact, Tibble meant to take Edmund Burgess and one workman for use, and one of the new apprentices for pleasure, letting them change in the middle of the day. The swagger of Giles actually forfeited for him the first turn, which—though he was no favourite with the men—would have been granted to his elder years and his relationship to the master; but on his overbearing demand to enter the boat which was to carry down a little anvil and charcoal furnace, with a few tools, rivets, nails, and horse-shoes, Tibble coolly returned that he needed no such gay birds; but if Giles chose to be ready in his leathern coat when Stephen Birkenholt came home at midday, mayhap he might change with him.
Stephen went joyously in the plainest of attire, though Tibble in fur cap, grimy jerkin, and leathern apron was no elegant steersman; and Edmund, who was at the age of youthful foppery, shrugged his shoulders a little, and disguised the garments of the smithy with his best flat cap and newest mantle.
They kept in the wake of the handsome barge which Master Headley shared with his friend and brother alderman, Master Hope the draper, whose young wife, in a beautiful black velvet hood and shining blue satin kirtle, was evidently petting Dennet to her heart’s content, though the little damsel never lost an opportunity of nodding to her friends in the plainer barge in the rear.
The Tudor tilting matches cost no lives, and seldom broke bones. They were chiefly opportunities for the display of brilliant enamelled and gilt armour, at the very acme of cumbrous magnificence; and of equally gorgeous embroidery spread out over the vast expanse provided by elephantine Flemish horses. Even if the weapons had not been purposely blunted, and if the champions had really desired to slay one another, they would have found the task very difficult, as in effect they did in the actual game of war. But the spectacle was a splendid one, and all the apparatus was ready in the armourers’ tent, marked by St. George and the Dragon. Tibble ensconced himself in the innermost corner with a “tractate,” borrowed from his friend Lucas, and sent the apprentices to gaze their fill at the rapidly filling circles of seats. They saw King Harry, resplendent in gilded armour—“from their own anvil, true English steel,” said Edmund, proudly—hand to her seat his sister the bride, one of the most beautiful women then in existence, with a lovely and delicate bloom on her fair face and exquisite Plantagenet features. No more royally handsome creatures could the world have offered than that brother and sister, and the English world appreciated them and made the lists ring with applause at the fair lady who had disdained foreign princes to wed her true love, an honest Englishman.
He—the cloth of frieze—in blue Milanese armour, made to look as classical as possible, and with clasps and medals engraven from antique gems—handed in Queen Katharine, whose dark but glowing Spanish complexion made a striking contrast to the dazzling fairness of her young sister-in-law. Near them sat a stout burly figure in episcopal purple, and at his feet there was a form which nearly took away all Stephen’s pleasure for the time. For it was in motley, and he could hear the bells jingle, while the hot blood rose in his cheeks in the dread lest Burgess should detect the connection, or recognise in the jester the grave personage who had come to negotiate with Mr. Headley for his indentures, or worse still, that the fool should see and claim him.
However, Quipsome Hal seemed to be exchanging drolleries with the young dowager of France, who, sooth to say, giggled in a very unqueenly manner at jokes which made the grave Spanish-born queen draw up her stately head, and converse with a lady on her other hand—an equally stately lady, somewhat older, with the straight Plantagenet features, and by her side a handsome boy, who, though only eight or nine years was tonsured, and had a little scholar’s gown. “That,” said Edmund, “is my Lady Countess of Salisbury, of whom Giles Headley prates so much.”
A tournament, which was merely a game between gorgeously equipped princes and nobles, afforded little scope for adventure worthy of record, though it gave great diversion to the spectators. Stephen gazed like one fascinated at the gay panoply of horse and man with the huge plumes on the heads of both, as they rushed against one another, and he shared with Edmund the triumph when the lance from their armoury held good, the vexation if it were shivered. All would have been perfect but for the sight of his uncle, playing off his drolleries in a manner that gave him a sense of personal degradation.
To escape from the sight almost consoled him when, in the pause after the first courses had been run, Tibble told him and Burgess to return, and send Headley and another workman with a fresh bundle of lances for the afternoon’s tilting. Stephen further hoped to find his brother at the Dragon court, as it was one of those holidays that set every one free, and separation began to make the brothers value their meetings.
But Ambrose was not at the Dragon court, and when Stephen went in quest of him to the Temple, Perronel had not seen him since the early morning, but she said he seemed so much bitten with the little old man’s scholarship that she had small doubt that he would be found poring over a book in Warwick Inner Yard.
Thither therefore did Stephen repair. The place was nearly deserted, for the inhabitants were mostly either artisans or that far too numerous race who lived on the doles of convents, on the alms of churchgoers, and the largesses scattered among the people on public occasions, and these were for the most part pursuing their vocation both of gazing and looking out for gain among the spectators outside the lists. The door that Stephen had been shown as that of Ambrose’s master was, however, partly open, and close beside it sat in the sun a figure that amazed him. On a small mat or rug, with a black and yellow handkerchief over her head, and little scarlet legs crossed under a blue dress, all lighted up by the gay May sun, there slept the little dark, glowing maiden, with her head best as it leant against the wall, her rosy lips half open, her long black plaits on her shoulders.
Stepping up to the half-open door, whence he heard a voice reading, his astonishment was increased. At the table were his brother and his master, Ambrose with a black book in hand, Lucas Hansen with some papers, and on the ground was seated a venerable, white-bearded old man, something between Stephen’s notions of an apostle and of a magician, though the latter idea predominated at sight of a long parchment scroll covered with characters such as belonged to no alphabet that he had ever dreamt of. What were they doing to his brother? He was absolutely in an enchanter’s den. Was it a pixy at the door, guarding it? “Ambrose!” he cried aloud.
Everybody started. Ambrose sprang to his feet, exclaiming, “Stephen!” The pixy gave a little scream and jumped up, flying to the old man, who quietly rolled up his scroll.