The Prince and the Pauper by Mark Twain (desktop ebook reader TXT) 📖

having an hatchet in their hands, and boots

with pykes’ (points a foot long), ‘turned up. And after them came a

knight, then the Lord High Admiral, and with him five nobles, in doublets

of crimson velvet, voyded low on the back and before to the cannell-bone,

laced on the breasts with chains of silver; and over that, short cloaks

of crimson satin, and on their heads hats after the dancers’ fashion,

with pheasants’ feathers in them. These were appareled after the fashion

of Prussia. The torchbearers, which were about an hundred, were

appareled in crimson satin and green, like Moors, their faces black.

Next came in a mommarye. Then the minstrels, which were disguised,

danced; and the lords and ladies did wildly dance also, that it was a

pleasure to behold.’

 

And while Tom, in his high seat, was gazing upon this ‘wild’ dancing,

lost in admiration of the dazzling commingling of kaleidoscopic colours

which the whirling turmoil of gaudy figures below him presented, the

ragged but real little Prince of Wales was proclaiming his rights and his

wrongs, denouncing the impostor, and clamouring for admission at the

gates of Guildhall! The crowd enjoyed this episode prodigiously, and

pressed forward and craned their necks to see the small rioter.

Presently they began to taunt him and mock at him, purposely to goad him

into a higher and still more entertaining fury. Tears of mortification

sprang to his eyes, but he stood his ground and defied the mob right

royally. Other taunts followed, added mockings stung him, and he

exclaimed—

 

“I tell ye again, you pack of unmannerly curs, I am the Prince of Wales!

And all forlorn and friendless as I be, with none to give me word of

grace or help me in my need, yet will not I be driven from my ground, but

will maintain it!”

 

“Though thou be prince or no prince, ‘tis all one, thou be’st a gallant

lad, and not friendless neither! Here stand I by thy side to prove it;

and mind I tell thee thou might’st have a worser friend than Miles Hendon

and yet not tire thy legs with seeking. Rest thy small jaw, my child; I

talk the language of these base kennel-rats like to a very native.”

 

The speaker was a sort of Don Caesar de Bazan in dress, aspect, and

bearing. He was tall, trim-built, muscular. His doublet and trunks were

of rich material, but faded and threadbare, and their gold-lace

adornments were sadly tarnished; his ruff was rumpled and damaged; the

plume in his slouched hat was broken and had a bedraggled and

disreputable look; at his side he wore a long rapier in a rusty iron

sheath; his swaggering carriage marked him at once as a ruffler of the

camp. The speech of this fantastic figure was received with an explosion

of jeers and laughter. Some cried, “‘Tis another prince in disguise!”

“‘Ware thy tongue, friend: belike he is dangerous!” “Marry, he looketh

it—mark his eye!” “Pluck the lad from him—to the horse-pond wi’ the

cub!”

 

Instantly a hand was laid upon the Prince, under the impulse of this

happy thought; as instantly the stranger’s long sword was out and the

meddler went to the earth under a sounding thump with the flat of it.

The next moment a score of voices shouted, “Kill the dog! Kill him!

Kill him!” and the mob closed in on the warrior, who backed himself

against a wall and began to lay about him with his long weapon like a

madman. His victims sprawled this way and that, but the mob-tide poured

over their prostrate forms and dashed itself against the champion with

undiminished fury. His moments seemed numbered, his destruction certain,

when suddenly a trumpet-blast sounded, a voice shouted, “Way for the

King’s messenger!” and a troop of horsemen came charging down upon the

mob, who fled out of harm’s reach as fast as their legs could carry them.

The bold stranger caught up the Prince in his arms, and was soon far away

from danger and the multitude.

 

Return we within the Guildhall. Suddenly, high above the jubilant roar

and thunder of the revel, broke the clear peal of a bugle-note. There

was instant silence—a deep hush; then a single voice rose—that of the

messenger from the palace—and began to pipe forth a proclamation, the

whole multitude standing listening.

 

The closing words, solemnly pronounced, were—

 

“The King is dead!”

 

The great assemblage bent their heads upon their breasts with one accord;

remained so, in profound silence, a few moments; then all sank upon their

knees in a body, stretched out their hands toward Tom, and a mighty shout

burst forth that seemed to shake the building—

 

“Long live the King!”

 

Poor Tom’s dazed eyes wandered abroad over this stupefying spectacle, and

finally rested dreamily upon the kneeling princesses beside him, a

moment, then upon the Earl of Hertford. A sudden purpose dawned in his

face. He said, in a low tone, at Lord Hertford’s ear—

 

“Answer me truly, on thy faith and honour! Uttered I here a command, the

which none but a king might hold privilege and prerogative to utter,

would such commandment be obeyed, and none rise up to say me nay?”

 

“None, my liege, in all these realms. In thy person bides the majesty of

England. Thou art the king—thy word is law.”

 

Tom responded, in a strong, earnest voice, and with great animation—

 

“Then shall the king’s law be law of mercy, from this day, and never more

be law of blood! Up from thy knees and away! To the Tower, and say the

King decrees the Duke of Norfolk shall not die!” {1}

 

The words were caught up and carried eagerly from lip to lip far and wide

over the hall, and as Hertford hurried from the presence, another

prodigious shout burst forth—

 

“The reign of blood is ended! Long live Edward, King of England!”

 

Chapter XII. The Prince and his deliverer.

 

As soon as Miles Hendon and the little prince were clear of the mob, they

struck down through back lanes and alleys toward the river. Their way

was unobstructed until they approached London Bridge; then they ploughed

into the multitude again, Hendon keeping a fast grip upon the Prince’s—

no, the King’s—wrist. The tremendous news was already abroad, and the

boy learned it from a thousand voices at once—“The King is dead!” The

tidings struck a chill to the heart of the poor little waif, and sent a

shudder through his frame. He realised the greatness of his loss, and

was filled with a bitter grief; for the grim tyrant who had been such a

terror to others had always been gentle with him. The tears sprang to

his eyes and blurred all objects. For an instant he felt himself the

most forlorn, outcast, and forsaken of God’s creatures—then another cry

shook the night with its far-reaching thunders: “Long live King Edward

the Sixth!” and this made his eyes kindle, and thrilled him with pride to

his fingers’ ends. “Ah,” he thought, “how grand and strange it seems—I

AM KING!”

 

Our friends threaded their way slowly through the throngs upon the

bridge. This structure, which had stood for six hundred years, and had

been a noisy and populous thoroughfare all that time, was a curious

affair, for a closely packed rank of stores and shops, with family

quarters overhead, stretched along both sides of it, from one bank of the

river to the other. The Bridge was a sort of town to itself; it had its

inn, its beer-houses, its bakeries, its haberdasheries, its food markets,

its manufacturing industries, and even its church. It looked upon the

two neighbours which it linked together—London and Southwark—as being

well enough as suburbs, but not otherwise particularly important. It was

a close corporation, so to speak; it was a narrow town, of a single

street a fifth of a mile long, its population was but a village

population and everybody in it knew all his fellow-townsmen intimately,

and had known their fathers and mothers before them—and all their little

family affairs into the bargain. It had its aristocracy, of course—its

fine old families of butchers, and bakers, and what-not, who had occupied

the same old premises for five or six hundred years, and knew the great

history of the Bridge from beginning to end, and all its strange legends;

and who always talked bridgy talk, and thought bridgy thoughts, and lied

in a long, level, direct, substantial bridgy way. It was just the sort

of population to be narrow and ignorant and self-conceited. Children were

born on the Bridge, were reared there, grew to old age, and finally died

without ever having set a foot upon any part of the world but London

Bridge alone. Such people would naturally imagine that the mighty and

interminable procession which moved through its street night and day,

with its confused roar of shouts and cries, its neighings and bellowing

and bleatings and its muffled thunder-tramp, was the one great thing in

this world, and themselves somehow the proprietors of it. And so they

were, in effect—at least they could exhibit it from their windows, and

did—for a consideration—whenever a returning king or hero gave it a

fleeting splendour, for there was no place like it for affording a long,

straight, uninterrupted view of marching columns.

 

Men born and reared upon the Bridge found life unendurably dull and inane

elsewhere. History tells of one of these who left the Bridge at the age

of seventy-one and retired to the country. But he could only fret and

toss in his bed; he could not go to sleep, the deep stillness was so

painful, so awful, so oppressive. When he was worn out with it, at last,

he fled back to his old home, a lean and haggard spectre, and fell

peacefully to rest and pleasant dreams under the lulling music of the

lashing waters and the boom and crash and thunder of London Bridge.

 

In the times of which we are writing, the Bridge furnished ‘object

lessons’ in English history for its children—namely, the livid and

decaying heads of renowned men impaled upon iron spikes atop of its

gateways. But we digress.

 

Hendon’s lodgings were in the little inn on the Bridge. As he neared the

door with his small friend, a rough voice said—

 

“So, thou’rt come at last! Thou’lt not escape again, I warrant thee; and

if pounding thy bones to a pudding can teach thee somewhat, thou’lt not

keep us waiting another time, mayhap”—and John Canty put out his hand to

seize the boy.

 

Miles Hendon stepped in the way and said—

 

“Not too fast, friend. Thou art needlessly rough, methinks. What is the

lad to thee?”

 

“If it be any business of thine to make and meddle in others’ affairs, he

is my son.”

 

“‘Tis a lie!” cried the little King, hotly.

 

“Boldly said, and I believe thee, whether thy small headpiece be sound or

cracked, my boy. But whether this scurvy ruffian be thy father or no,

‘tis all one, he shall not have thee to beat thee and abuse, according to

his threat, so thou prefer to bide with me.”

 

“I do, I do—I know him not, I loathe him, and will die before I will go

with him.”

 

“Then ‘tis settled, and there is nought more to say.”

 

“We will see, as to that!” exclaimed John Canty, striding past Hendon to

get at the boy; “by force shall he—”

 

“If thou do but touch him, thou animated offal, I will spit thee like a

goose!” said Hendon, barring the way and laying his hand upon his sword

hilt. Canty drew back. “Now mark ye,” continued Hendon, “I took