The Armourer's Prentices by Charlotte M. Yonge (best way to read e books .txt) 📖

now and then could the youths try to make their way to some spot whence they could see the tournament.

Smallbones was more excited by the report of fountains of good red and white wines of all sorts, flowing perpetually in the court of King Henry’s splended mock castle; but fortunately one gulp was enough for an English palate nurtured on ale and mead, and he was disgusted at the heaps of country folk, men-at-arms, beggars and vagabonds of all kinds, who swilled the liquor continually, and, in loathsome contrast to the external splendours, lay wallowing on the ground so thickly that it was sometimes hardly possible to move without treading on them.

“I stumbled over a dozen,” said the jester, as he strolled into the little staked inclosure that the Dragon party had arranged round their tent for the prosecution of their labours, which were too important to all the champions not to be respected. “Lance and sword have not laid so many low in the lists as have the doughty Baron Burgundy and the heady knight Messire Sherris Sack.”

“Villain Verjuice and Varlet Vinegar is what Kit there calls them,” said Stephen, looking up from the work he was carrying on over a pan of glowing charcoal.

“Yea,” said Smallbones, intermitting his noisy operations, “and the more of swine be they that gorge themselves on it. I told Jack and Hob that ’twould be shame for English folk to drown themselves like French frogs or Flemish hogs.”

“Hogs!” returned Randall. “A decent Hampshire hog would scorn to be lodged as many a knight and squire and lady too is now, pigging it in styes and hovels and haylofts by night, and pranking it by day with the best!”

“Sooth enough,” said Smallbones. “Yea, we have had two knights and their squires beseeching us for leave to sleep under our waggon! Not an angel had they got among the four of them either, having all their year’s income on their backs, and more too. I trow they and their heirs will have good cause to remember this same Field of Gold.”

“And what be’st thou doing, nevvy?” asked the jester. “Thy trade seems as brisk as though red blood were flowing instead of red wine.”

“I am doing my part towards making the King into Hercules,” said Stephen, “though verily the tailor hath more part therein than we have; but he must needs have a breastplate of scales of gold, and that by to-morrow’s morn. As Ambrose would say, ‘if he will be a pagan god, he should have what’s-his-name, the smith of the gods, to work for him.’”

“I heard of that freak,” said the jester. “There be a dozen tailors and all the Queen’s tirewomen frizzling up a good piece of cloth of gold for the lion’s mane, covering a club with green damask with pricks, cutting out green velvet and gummed silk for his garland! In sooth, these graces have left me so far behind in foolery that I have not a jest left in my pouch! So here I be, while my Lord Cardinal is shut up with Madame d’Angoulême in the castle—the real old castle, mind you—doing the work, leaving the kings and queens to do their own fooling.”

“Have you spoken with the French King, Hal?” asked Smallbones, who had become a great crony of his, since the anxieties of May Eve.

“So far as I may when I have no French, and he no English! He is a comely fellow, with a blithe tongue and a merry eye, I warrant you a chanticleer who will lose nought for lack of crowing. He’ll crow louder than ever now he hath given our Harry a fall.”

“No! hath he?” and Giles, Stephen, and Smallbones, all suspended their work to listen in concern.

“Ay marry, hath he! The two took it into their royal noddles to try a fall, and wrestled together on the grass, when by some ill hap, this same Francis tripped up our Harry, so that he was on the sward for a moment. He was up again forthwith, and in full heart for another round, when all the Frenchmen burst in gabbling; and, though their King was willing to play the match out fairly, they wouldn’t let him, and my Lord Cardinal said something about making ill blood, whereat our King laughed and was content to leave it. As I told him, we have given the French falls enough to let them make much of this one.”

“I hope he will yet give the mounseer a good shaking,” muttered Smallbones.

“How now, Will! Who’s that at the door? We are on his grace’s work and can touch none other man’s were it the King of France himself, or his Constable, who is finer still.”

By way of expressing “No admittance except on business,” Smallbones kept Will Wherry in charge of the door of his little territory, which having a mud wall on two sides, and a broad brook with quaking banks on a third, had been easily fenced on the fourth, so as to protect tent, waggon, horses, and work from the incursions of idlers. Will however answered, “The gentleman saith he hath kindred here.”

“Ay!” and there pushed in, past the lad a tall, lean form, with a gay but soiled short cloak over one shoulder, a suit of worn buff, a cap garnished with a dilapidated black and yellow feather, and a pair of gilt spurs. “If this be as they told me, where Armourer Headley’s folk lodge—I have here a sort of a cousin. Yea, yonder’s the brave lad who had no qualms at the flash of a good Toledo in a knight’s fist. How now, my nevvy! Is not my daughter’s nevvy—mine?”

“Save your knighthood!” said Smallbones. “Who would have looked to see you here, Sir John? Methought you were in the Emperor’s service!”

“A stout man-at-arms is of all services,” returned Fulford. “I’m here with half Flanders to see this mighty show, and pick up a few more lusty Badgers at this encounter of old comrades. Is old Headley here?”

“Nay, he is safe at home, where I would I were,” sighed Kit.

“And you are my young master his nephew, who knew where to purvey me of good steel,” added Fulford, shaking Giles’s hand. “You are fain, doubtless, you youngsters, to be forth without the old man. Ha! and you’ve no lack of merry company.”

Harry Randall’s first impulse had been to look to the right and left for the means of avoiding this encounter, but there was no escape; and he was moreover in most fantastic motley, arrayed in one of the many suits provided for the occasion. It was in imitation of a parrot, brilliant grass-green velvet, touched here and there with scarlet, yellow, or blue. He had been only half disguised on the occasion of Fulford’s visit to his wife, and he perceived the start of recognition in the eyes of the Condottiere, so that he knew it would be vain to try to conceal his identity.

“You sought Stephen Birkenholt,” he said. “And you’ve lit on something nearer, if so be you’ll acknowledge the paraquito that your Perronel hath mated with.”

The Condottiere burst into a roar of laughter so violent that he had to lean against the mud wall, and hold his sides. “Ha, ha! that I should be father-in-law to a fool!” and then he set off again. “That the sober, dainty little wench should have wedded a fool! Ha! ha! ha!”

“Sir,” cried Stephen hotly, “I would have you to know that mine uncle here, Master Harry Randall, is a yeoman of good birth, and that he undertook his present part to support your own father and child! Methinks you are the last who should jeer at and insult him!”

“Stephen is right,” said Giles. “This is my kinsman’s tent, and no man shall say a word against Master Harry Randall therein.”

“Well crowed, my young London gamebirds,” returned Fulford, coolly. “I meant no disrespect to the gentleman in green. Nay, I am mightily beholden to him for acting his part out and taking on himself that would scarce befit a gentleman of a company—impedimenta, as we used to say in the grammar school. How does the old man?—I must find some token to send him.”

“He is beyond the reach of all tokens from you save prayers and masses,” returned Randall, gravely.

“Ay? You say not so? Old gaffer dead?” And when the soldier was told how the feeble thread of life had been snapped by the shock of joy on his coming, a fit of compunction and sorrow seized him. He covered his face with his hands and wept with a loudness of grief that surprised and touched his hearers; and presently began to bemoan himself that he had hardly a mark in his purse to pay for a mass; but therewith he proceeded to erect before him the cross hilt of poor Abenali’s sword, and to vow thereupon that the first spoil and the first ransom, that it should please the saints to send him, should be entirely spent in masses for the soul of Martin Fulford. This tribute apparently stilled both grief and remorse, for looking up at the grotesque figure of Randall, he said, “Methought they told me, master son, that you were in the right quarters for beads and masses and all that gear—a varlet of Master Butcher-Cardinal’s, or the like—but mayhap ’twas part of your fooling.”

“Not so,” replied Randall. “’Tis to the Cardinal that I belong,” holding out his sleeve, where the scarlet hat was neatly worked, “and I’ll brook no word against his honour.”

“Ho! ho! Maybe you looked to have the hat on your own head,” quoth Fulford, waxing familiar, “if your master comes to be Pope after his own reckoning. Why, I’ve known a Cardinal get the scarlet because an ape had danced on the roof with him in his arms!”

“You forget! I’m a wedded man,” said Randall, who certainly, in private life, had much less of the buffoon about him than his father-in-law.

“Impedimentum again,” whistled the knight. “Put a halter round her neck, and sell her for a pot of beer.”

“I’d rather put a halter round my own neck for good and all,” said Hal, his face reddening; but among other accomplishments of his position, he had learnt to keep his temper, however indignant he felt.

“Well—she’s a knight’s daughter, and preferments will be plenty. Thou’lt make me captain of the Pope’s guard, fair son—there’s no post I should like better. Or I might put up with an Italian earldom or the like. Honour would befit me quite as well as that old fellow, Prosper Colonna; and the Badgers would well become the Pope’s scarlet and yellow liveries.”

The Badgers, it appeared, were in camp not far from Gravelines, whence the Emperor was watching the conference between his uncle-in-law and his chief enemy; and thence Fulford, who had a good many French acquaintance, having once served under Francis I., had come over to see the sport. Moreover, he contrived to attach himself to the armourer’s party, in a manner that either Alderman Headley himself, or Tibble Steelman, would effectually have prevented; but which Kit Smallbones had not sufficient moral weight to hinder, even if he had had a greater dislike to being treated as a boon companion by a knight who had seen the world, could appreciate good ale, and tell all manner of tales of his experiences.

So the odd sort of kindred that the captain chose to claim with Stephen Birkenholt was allowed, and in right of it, he was permitted to sleep in the waggon; and thereupon his big raw-boned charger was found sharing the fodder of the plump broad-backed cart horses, while he himself, whenever sport was not going forward for him, or work for the armourers, sat discussing with Kit the merits or demerits of the liquors of all nations, either in their own yard or in some of the numerous drinking booths that had sprung up around.

To no one was this arrangement so distasteful as to Quipsome Hal, who felt himself in some sort the occasion of the intrusion, and yet was quite unable to prevent it, while everything he said was treated as a joke by his unwelcome father-in-law. It was a coarse time, and Wolsey’s was not a refined or spiritual establishment, but it was decorous, and Randall had such an affection and respect for the innocence of his sister’s young son, that he could not bear to have him exposed to the company of one habituated to the licentiousness of the mercenary soldier. At first the jester hoped to remove the lads from the danger, for the brief remainder of their stay, by making double exertion to obtain places for them at any diversion which might be going on when their day’s work was ended, and of these, of course, there was a wide choice, subordinate to the magnificent masquing of kings