The Armourer's Prentices

The alderman was really sorry for her, and felt himself to blame so far as that he had shifted the guidance of the expedition to such an insufficient head as poor Smallbones, so he let her rail on as much as she would, till the storm exhausted itself, and she settled into the trust that Giles would soon grow weary and return.  The good man felt bound to show her all hospitality, and the civilities to country cousins were in proportion to the rarity of their visits.  So Mrs. Headley stayed on after Tiptoff’s return to Salisbury, and had the best view feasible of all the pageants and diversions of autumn.  She saw some magnificent processions of clergy, she was welcomed at a civic banquet and drank of the loving cup, and she beheld the Lord Mayor’s Show in all its picturesque glory of emblazoned barges on the river.  In fact, she found the position of denizen of an alderman’s household so very agreeable that she did her best to make it a permanency.  Nay, Dennet soon found that she considered herself to be waiting there and keeping guard till her son’s return should establish her there, and that she viewed the girl already as a daughter—for which Dennet was by no means obliged to her!  She lavished counsel on her hostess, found fault with the maidens, criticised the cookery, walked into the kitchen and still-room with assistance and directions, and even made a strong effort to possess herself of the keys.

It must be confessed that Dennet was saucy!  It was her weapon of self-defence, and she considered herself insulted in her own house.

There she stood, exalted on a tall pair of pattens before the stout oaken table in the kitchen where a glowing fire burned; pewter, red and yellow earthenware, and clean scrubbed trenchers made a goodly show, a couple of men-cooks and twice as many scullions obeyed her behests—only the superior of the two first ever daring to argue a point with her.  There she stood, in her white apron, with sleeves turned up, daintily compounding her mincemeat for Christmas, when in stalked Mrs. Headley to offer her counsel and aid—but this was lost in a volley of barking from the long-backed, bandy-legged, turnspit dog, which was awaiting its turn at the wheel, and which ran forward, yapping with malign intentions towards the dame’s scarlet-hosed ankles.

She shook her petticoats at him, but Dennet tittered even while declaring that Tray hurt nobody.  Mrs. Headley reviled the dog, and then proceeded to advise Dennet that she should chop her citron finer.  Dennet made answer “that father liked a good stout piece of it.”  Mistress Headley offered to take the chopper and instruct her how to compound all in the true Sarum style.

“Grammercy, mistress, but we follow my grand-dame’s recipe!” said Dennet, grasping her implement firmly.

“Come, child, be not above taking a lesson from thine elders!  Where’s the goose?  What?” as the girl looked amazed, “where hast thou lived not to know that a live goose should be bled into the mincemeat?”

“I have never lived with barbarous, savage folk,” said Dennet—and therewith she burst into an irrepressible fit of laughter, trying in vain to check it, for a small and mischievous elf, freshly promoted to the office of scullion, had crept up and pinned a dish-cloth to the substantial petticoats, and as Mistress Headley whisked round to see what was the matter, like a kitten after its tail, it followed her like a train, while she rushed to box the ears of the offender, crying,

“You set him on, you little saucy vixen!  I saw it in your eyes.  Let the rascal be scourged.”

“Not so,” said Dennet, with prim mouth and laughing eyes.  “Far be it from me!  But ’tis ever the wont of the kitchen, when those come there who have no call thither.”

Mistress Headley flounced away, dish-cloth and all, to go whimpering to the alderman with her tale of insults.  She trusted that her cousin would give the pert wench a good beating.  She was not a whit too old for it.

“How oft did you beat Giles, good kinswoman?” said Dennet demurely, as she stood by her father.

“Whisht, whisht, child,” said her father, “this may not be!  I cannot have my guest flouted.”

“If she act as our guest, I will treat her with all honour and courtesy,” said the maiden; “but when she comes where we look not for guests, there is no saying what the black guard may take it on them to do.”

Master Headley was mischievously tickled at the retort, and not without hope that it might offend his kinswoman into departing; but she contented herself with denouncing all imaginable evils from Dennet’s ungoverned condition, with which she was prevented in her beneficence from interfering by the father’s foolish fondness.  He would rue the day!

Meantime if the alderman’s peace on one side was disturbed by his visitor, on the other, suitors for Dennet’s hand gave him little rest.  She was known to be a considerable heiress, and though Mistress Headley gave every one to understand that there was a contract with Giles, and that she was awaiting his return, this did not deter more wooers than Dennet ever knew of, from making proposals to her father.  Jasper Hope was offered, but he was too young, and besides, was a mercer—and Dennet and her father were agreed that her husband must go on with the trade.  Then there was a master armourer, but he was a widower with sons and daughters as old as Dennet, and she shook her head and laughed at the bare notion.  There also came a young knight who would have turned the Dragon court into a tilt-yard, and spent all the gold that long years of prudent toil had amassed.

If Mistress Headley deemed each denial the result of her vigilance for her son’s interests, she was the more impelled to expatiate on the folly of leaving a maid of sixteen to herself, to let the household go to rack and ruin; while as to the wench, she might prank herself in her own conceit, but no honest man would soon look at her for a wife, if her father left her to herself, without giving her a good stepmother, or at least putting a kinswoman in authority over her.

The alderman was stung.  He certainly had warmed a snake on his hearth, and how was he to be rid of it?  He secretly winked at the resumption of a forge fire that had been abandoned, because the noise and smoke incommoded the dwelling-house, and Kit Smallbones hammered his loudest there, when the guest might be taking her morning nap; but this had no effect in driving her away, though it may have told upon her temper; and good-humoured Master Headley was harassed more than he had ever been in his life.

“It puts me past my patience,” said he, turning into Tibble’s special workshop one afternoon.  “Here hath Mistress Hillyer of the Eagle been with me full of proposals that I would give my poor wench to that scapegrace lad of hers, who hath been twice called to account before the guild, but who now, forsooth, is to turn over a new leaf.”

“So I wis would the Dragon under him,” quoth Tibble.

“I told her ’twas not to be thought of, and then what does the dame but sniff the air and protest that I had better take heed, for there may not be so many who would choose a spoilt, misruled maid like mine.  There’s the work of yonder Sarum woman.  I tell thee, Tib, never was bull in the ring more baited than am I.”

“Yea, sir,” returned Tib, “there’ll be no help for it till our young mistress be wed.”

“Ay! that’s the rub!  But I’ve not seen one whom I could mate with her—let alone one who would keep up the old house.  Giles would have done that passably, though he were scarce worthy of the wench, even without—”  An expressive shake of the head denoted the rest.  “And now if he ever come home at all, ’twill be as a foul-mouthed, plundering scarecrow, like the kites of men-at-arms, who, if they lose not their lives, lose all that makes an honest life in the Italian wars.  I would have writ to Edmund Burgess, but I hear his elder brother is dead, and he is driving a good traffic at York.  Belike too he is wedded.”

“Nay,” said Tibble, “I could tell of one who would be true and faithful to your worship, and a loving husband to Mistress Dennet, ay, and would be a master that all of us would gladly cleave to.  For he is godly after his lights, and sound-hearted, and wots what good work be, and can do it.”

“That were a son-in-law, Tib!  Of who speakest thou?  Is he of good birth?”

“Yea, of gentle birth and breeding.”

“And willing?  But that they all are.  Wherefore then hath he never made suit?”

“He hath not yet his freedom.”

“Who be it then?”

“He that made this elbow-piece for the suit that Queen Margaret ordered for the little King of Scots,” returned Tibble, producing an exquisite miniature bit of workmanship.

“Stephen Birkenholt!  The fool’s nephew!  Mine own prentice!”

“Yea, and the best worker in steel we have yet turned out.  Since the sickness of last winter hath stiffened my joints and dimmed mine eyes, I had rather trust dainty work such as this to him than to myself.”

“Stephen!  Tibble, hath he set thee on to this?”

“No, sir.  We both know too well what becometh us; but when you were casting about for a mate for my young mistress, I could not but think how men seek far, and overlook the jewel at their feet.”

“He hath nought!  That brother of his will give him nought.”

“He hath what will be better for the old Dragon and for your worship’s self, than many a bag of gold, sir.”

“Thou sayst truly there, Tib.  I know him so far that he would not be the ingrate Jack to turn his back on the old master or the old man.  He is a good lad.  But—but—I’ve ever set my face against the prentice wedding the master’s daughter, save when he is of her own house, like Giles.  Tell me, Tibble, deemst thou that the varlet hath dared to lift his eyes to the lass?”

“I wot nothing of love!” said Tibble, somewhat grimly.  “I have seen nought.  I only told your worship where a good son and a good master might be had.  Is it your pleasure, sir, that we take in a freight of sea-coal from Simon Collier for the new furnace?  His is purest, if a mark more the chaldron.”

He spoke as if he put the recommendation of the son and master on the same line as that of the coal.  Mr. Headley answered the business matters absently, and ended by saying he would think on the council.

In Tibble’s workroom, with the clatter of a forge close to them, they had not heard a commotion in the court outside.  Dennet had been standing on the steps cleaning her tame starling’s cage, when Mistress Headley had suddenly come out on the gallery behind her, hotly scolding her laundress, and waving her cap to show how ill-starched it was.

The bird had taken fright and flown to the tree in the court; Dennet hastened in pursuit, but all the boys and children in the court rushing out after her, her blandishments had no chance, and “Goldspot” had fluttered on to the gateway.  Stephen had by this time come out, and hastened to the gate, hoping to turn the truant back from escaping into Cheapside; but all in vain, it flew out while the market was in full career, and he could only call back to her that he would not lose sight of it.

Out he hurried, Dennet waiting in a sort of despair by the tree for a time that seemed to her endless, until Stephen reappeared under the gate, with a signal that all was well.  She darted to meet him.  “Yea, mistress, here he is, the little caitiff.  He was just knocked down by this country lad’s cap—happily not hurt.  I told him you would give him a tester for your bird.”

“With all my heart!” and Dennet produced the coin.  “Oh!  Stephen, are you sure he is safe?  Thou bad Goldspot, to fly away from me!  Wink with thine eye—thou saucy rogue!  Wottest thou not but for Stephen they might be blinding thy sweet blue eyes with hot needles?”

“His wing is grown since the moulting,” said Stephen.  “It should be cut to hinder such mischances.”

“Will you do it?  I will hold him,” said Dennet.  “Ah! ’tis pity, the beauteous green gold-bedropped wing—that no armour of thine can equal, Stephen, not even that for the little King of Scots.  But shouldst not be so silly a bird, Goldie, even though thou hast thine excuse.  There!  Peck not, ill birdling.  Know thy friends, Master Stare.”

And with such pretty nonsense the two stood together, Dennet in her white cap, short crimson kirtle, little stiff collar, and white bib and apron, holding her bird upside down in one hand, and with the other trying to keep his angry beak from pecking Stephen, who, in his leathern coat and apron, grimed, as well as his crisp black hair, with soot, stood towering above her, stooping to hold out the lustrous wing with one hand while he used his smallest pair of shears with the other to clip the pen-feathers.

“See there, Master Alderman,” cried Mistress Headley, bursting on him from the gallery stairs.  “Be that what you call fitting for your daughter and your prentice, a beggar lad from the heath?  I ever told you she would bring you to shame, thus left to herself.  And now you see it.”

Their heads had been near together over the starling, but at this objurgation they started apart, both crimson in the cheeks, and Dennet flew up to her father, bird in hand, crying, “O father, father! suffer her not.  He did no wrong.  He was cutting my bird’s wing.”

“I suffer no one to insult my child in her own house,” said the alderman, so much provoked as to be determined to put an end to it all at once.  “Stephen Birkenholt, come here.”

Stephen came, cap in hand, red in the face, with a strange tumult in his heart, ready to plead guilty, though he had done nothing, but imagining at the moment that his feelings had been actions.

“Stephen,” said the alderman, “thou art a true and worthy lad!  Canst thou love my daughter?”

“I—I crave your pardon, sir, there was no helping it,” stammered Stephen, not catching the tone of the strange interrogation, and expecting any amount of terrible consequences for his presumption.

“Then thou wilt be a faithful spouse to her, and son to me?  And Dennet, my daughter, hast thou any distaste to this youth—though he bring nought but skill and honesty?”

“O, father, father!  I—I had rather have him than any other!”

“Then, Stephen Birkenholt and Dennet Headley, ye shall be man and wife, so soon as the young man’s term be over, and he be a freeman—so he continue to be that which he seems at present.  Thereto I give my word, I, Giles Headley, Alderman of the Chepe Ward, and thereof ye are witnesses, all of you.  And God’s blessing on it.”

A tremendous hurrah arose, led by Kit Smallbones, from every workman in the court, and the while Stephen and Dennet, unaware of anything else, flew into one another’s arms, while Goldspot, on whom the operation had been fortunately completed, took refuge upon Stephen’s head.

“O, Mistress Dennet, I have made you black all over!” was Stephen’s first word.

“Heed not, I ever loved the black!” she cried, as her eyes sparkled.

“So I have done what was to thy mind, my lass?” said Master Headley, who, without ever having thought of consulting his daughter, was delighted to see that her heart was with him.

“Sir, I did not know fully—but indeed I should never have been so happy as I am now.”

“Sir,” added Stephen, putting his knee to the ground, “it nearly wrung my heart to think of her as belonging to another, though I never durst utter aught”—and while Dennet embraced her father, Stephen sobbed for very joy, and with difficulty said in broken words something about a “son’s duty and devotion.”

They were broken in upon by Mistress Headley, who, after standing in mute consternation, fell on them in a fury.  She understood the device now!  All had been a scheme laid amongst them for defrauding her poor fatherless child, driving him away, and taking up this beggarly brat.  She had seen through the little baggage from the first, and she pitied Master Headley.  Rage was utterly ungovernable in those days, and she actually was flying to attack Dennet with her nails when the alderman caught her by the wrists; and she would have been almost too much for him, had not Kit Smallbones come to his assistance, and carried her, kicking and screaming like a naughty child, into the house.  There was small restraint of temper in those days even in high life, and below it, there was some reason for the employment of the padlock and the ducking stool.

Floods of tears restored the dame to some sort of composure; but she declared she could stay no longer in a house where her son had been ill-used and deceived, and she had been insulted.  The alderman thought the insult had been the other way, but he was too glad to be rid of her on any terms to gainsay her, and at his own charge, undertook to procure horse and escort to convey her safely to Salisbury the next morning.  He advised Stephen to keep out of her sight for the rest of the day, giving leave of absence, so that the youth, as one treading on air, set forth to carry to his brother, his aunt, and if possible, his uncle, the intelligence that he could as yet hardly believe was more than a happy dream.

CHAPTER XXIII

UNWELCOME PREFERMENT

“I am a poor fallen man, unworthy nowTo be thy lord and master.  Seek the king!That sun I pray may never set.”Shakespeare.

Matters flowed on peaceably with Stephen and Dennet.  The alderman saw no reason to repent his decision, hastily as it had been made.  Stephen gave himself no unseemly airs of presumption, but worked on as one whose heart was in the business, and Dennet rewarded her father’s trust by her discretion.

They were happily married in the summer of 1522, as soon as Stephen’s apprenticeship was over; and from that time, he was in the position of the master’s son, with more and more devolving on him as Tibble became increasingly rheumatic every winter, and the alderman himself grew in flesh and in distaste to exertion.

Ambrose meanwhile prospered with his master, and could easily have obtained some office in the law courts that would have enabled him to make a home of his own; but if he had the least inclination to the love of women, it was all merged in a silent distant worship of “sweet pale Margaret, rare pale Margaret,” the like-minded daughter of Sir Thomas More—an affection which was so entirely devotion at a shrine, that it suffered no shock when Sir Thomas at length consented to his daughter’s marriage with William Roper.

Ambrose was the only person who ever received any communication from Giles Headley.  They were few and far between, but when Stephen Gardiner returned from his embassy to Pope Clement VII., who was then at Orvieto, one of the suite reported to Ambrose how astonished he had been by being accosted in good English by one of the imperial men-at-arms, who were guarding his Holiness in actual though unconfessed captivity.  This person had sent his commendations to Ambrose, and likewise a laborious bit of writing, which looked as if he were fast forgetting the art.  It bade Ambrose inform his mother and all his friends and kin that he was well and coming to preferment, and inclosed for Aldonza a small mother-of-pearl cross blessed by the Pope.  Giles added that he should bring her finer gifts by and by.

Seven years’ constancy!  It gave quite a respectability to Giles’s love, and Aldonza was still ready and patient while waiting in attendance on her beloved mistress.

Ambrose lived on in the colony at Chelsea, sometimes attending his master, especially on diplomatic missions, and generally acting as librarian and foreign secretary, and obtaining some notice from Erasmus on the great scholar’s visit to Chelsea.  Under such guidance, Ambrose’s opinions had settled down a good deal; and he was a disappointment to Tibble, whose views advanced proportionably as he worked less, and read and thought more.  He so bitterly resented and deplored the burning of Tindal’s Bible that there was constant fear that he might bring on himself the same fate, especially as he treasured his own copy and studied it constantly.  The reform that Wolsey had intended to effect when he obtained the legatine authority seemed to fall into the background among political interests, and his efforts had as yet no result save the suppression of some useless and ill-managed small religious houses to endow his magnificent project of York College at Oxford, with a feeder at Ipswich, his native town.

He was waiting to obtain the papacy, when he would deal better with the abuses.  Randall once asked him if he were not waiting to be King of Heaven, when he could make root and branch work at once.  Hal had never so nearly incurred a flogging!

And in the meantime another influence was at work, an influence only heard of at first in whispered jests, which made loyal-hearted Dennet blush and look indignant, but which soon grew to sad earnest, as she could not but avow, when she beheld the stately pomp of the two Cardinals, Wolsey and Campeggio, sweep up to the Blackfriars Convent to sit in judgment on the marriage of poor Queen Katharine.

“Out on them!” she said.  “So many learned men to set their wits against one poor woman!”  And she heartily rejoiced when they came to no decision, and the Pope was appealed to.  As to understanding all the explanations that Ambrose brought from time to time, she called them quirks and quiddities, and left them to her father and Tibble to discuss in their chimney corners.

They had seen nothing of the jester for a good while, for he was with Wolsey, who was attending the King on a progress through the midland shires.  When the Cardinal returned to open the law courts as Chancellor at the beginning of the autumn term, still Randall kept away from home, perhaps because he had forebodings that he could not bear to mention.

On the evening of that very day, London rang with the tidings that the Great Seal had been taken from the Cardinal, and that he was under orders to yield up his noble mansion of York House and to retire to Esher; nay, it was reported that he was to be imprisoned in the Tower, and the next day the Thames was crowded with more than a thousand boats filled with people, expecting to see him landed at the Traitors’ Gate, and much disappointed when his barge turned towards Putney.

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.”

“’Tis true indeed, your worship,” said Ambrose, “though it will lay a heavy charge on him, and divert him from much that he loveth better still.  I came to ask of my sister Dennet a supper and a bed for the night, as I have been on business for him, and can scarce get back to Chelsea.”

“And welcome,” said Dennet.  “Little Giles and Bess have been wearying for their uncle.”

“I must not toy with them yet,” said Ambrose, “I have a message for my aunt.  Brother, wilt thou walk down to the Temple with me before supper?”

“Yea, and how is it with Master Randall?” asked Dennet.  “Be he gone with my Lord Cardinal?”

“He is made over to the King,” said Ambrose briefly.  “’Tis that which I must tell his wife.”

“Have with thee, then,” said Stephen, linking his arm into that of his brother, for to be together was still as great an enjoyment to them as in Forest days.  And on the way, Ambrose told what he had not been willing to utter in full assembly in the hall.  He had been sent by his master with a letter of condolence to the fallen Cardinal, and likewise of inquiry into some necessary business connected with the chancellorship.  Wolsey had not time to answer before embarking, but as Sir Thomas had vouched for the messenger’s ability and trustiness, he had bidden Ambrose come into his barge, and receive his instructions.  Thus Ambrose had landed with him, just as a messenger came riding in haste from the King, with a kind greeting, assuring his old friend that his seeming disgrace was only for a time, and for political reasons, and sending him a ring in token thereof.  The Cardinal had fallen on his knees to receive the message, had snatched a gold chain and precious relic from his own neck to reward the messenger, and then, casting about for some gift for the King, “by ill luck,” said Ambrose, “his eye lit upon our uncle, and he instantly declared that he would bestow Patch, as the Court chooses to call him, on the King.  Well, as thou canst guess, Hal is hotly wroth at the treatment of his lord, whom he truly loveth; and he flung himself before the Cardinal, and besought that he might not be sent from his good lord.  But the Cardinal was only chafed at aught that gainsaid him; and all he did was to say he would have no more ado, he had made his gift.  ‘Get thee gone,’ he said, as if he had been ordering off a horse or dog.  Well-a-day! it was hard to brook the sight, and Hal’s blood was up.  He flatly refused to go, saying he was the Cardinal’s servant, but no villain nor serf to be thus made over without his own will.”