THE PLOT OF THE HOSTELRY--THE MAID AND THE SCHOLAR IN THEIR HOME.
The country was still disturbed, and the adherents, whether of Henry
or the earl, still rose in many an outbreak, though prevented from
swelling into one common army by the extraordinary vigour not only of
Edward, but of Gloucester and Hastings,--when one morning, just after
the events thus rapidly related, the hostelry of Master Sancroft, in
the suburban parish of Marybone, rejoiced in a motley crowd of
customers and topers.
Some half-score soldiers, returned in triumph from the royal camp, sat
round a table placed agreeably enough in the deep recess made by the
large jutting lattice; with them were mingled about as many women,
strangely and gaudily clad. These last were all young; one or two,
indeed, little advanced from childhood. But there was no expression
of youth in their hard, sinister features: coarse paint supplied the
place of bloom; the very youngest had a wrinkle on her brow; their
forms wanted the round and supple grace of early years. Living
principally in the open air, trained from infancy to feats of
activity, their muscles were sharp and prominent, their aspects had
something of masculine audacity and rudeness; health itself seemed in
them more loathsome than disease. Upon those faces of bronze, vice
had set its ineffable, unmistaken seal. To those eyes never had
sprung the tears of compassion or woman's gentle sorrow; on those
brows never had flushed the glow of modest shame: their very voices
half belied their sex,--harsh and deep and hoarse, their laughter loud
and dissonant. Some amongst them were not destitute of a certain
beauty, but it was a beauty of feature with a common hideousness of
expression,--an expression at once cunning, bold, callous, licentious.
Womanless through the worst vices of woman, passionless through the
premature waste of passion, they stood between the sexes like foul and
monstrous anomalies, made up and fashioned from the rank depravities
of both. These creatures seemed to have newly arrived from some long
wayfaring; their shoes and the hems of their robes were covered with
dust and mire; their faces were heated, and the veins in their bare,
sinewy, sunburned arms were swollen by fatigue. Each had beside her
on the floor a timbrel, each wore at her girdle a long knife in its
sheath: well that the sheaths hid the blades, for not one--not even
that which yon cold-eyed child of fifteen wore--but had on its steel
the dark stain of human blood!
The presence of soldiers fresh from the scene of action had naturally
brought into the hostelry several of the idle gossips of the suburb,
and these stood round the table, drinking into their large ears the
boasting narratives of the soldiers. At a small table, apart from the
revellers, but evidently listening with attention to all the news of
the hour, sat a friar, gravely discussing a mighty tankard of huffcap,
and ever and anon, as he lifted his head for the purpose of drinking,
glancing a wanton eye at one of the tymbesteres.
"But an' you had seen," said a trooper, who was the mouthpiece of his
comrades--"an' you had seen the raptrils run when King Edward himself
led the charge! Marry, it was like a cat in a rabbit burrow! Easy to
see, I trow, that Earl Warwick was not amongst them! His men, at
least, fight like devils!"
"But there was one tall fellow," said a soldier, setting down his
tankard, "who made a good fight and dour, and, but for me and my
comrades, would have cut his way to the king."
"Ay, ay, true; we saved his highness, and ought to have been
knighted,--but there's no gratitude nowadays!"
"And who was this doughty warrior?" asked one of the bystanders, who
secretly favoured the rebellion.
"Why, it was said that he was Robin of Redesdale,--he who fought my
Lord Montagu off York."
"Our Robin!" exclaimed several voices. "Ay, he was ever a brave
fellow--poor Robin!"
"'Your Robin,' and 'poor Robin,' varlets!" cried the principal
trooper. "Have a care! What do ye mean by your Robin?"
"Marry, sir soldier," quoth a butcher, scratching his head, and in a
humble voice, "craving your pardon and the king's, this Master Robin
sojourned a short time in this hamlet, and was a kind neighbour, and
mighty glib of the tongue. Don't ye mind, neighbours," he added
rapidly, eager to change the conversation, "how he made us leave off
when we were just about burning Adam Warner, the old nigromancer, in
his den yonder? Who else could have done that? But an' we had known
Robin had been a rebel to sweet King Edward, we'd have roasted him
along with the wizard!"
One of the timbrel-girls, the leader of the choir, her arm round a
soldier's neck, looked up at the last speech, and her eye followed the
gesture of the butcher, as he pointed through the open lattice to the
sombre, ruinous abode of Adam Warner.
"Was that the house ye would have burned?" she asked abruptly.
"Yes; but Robin told us the king would hang those who took on them the
king's blessed privilege of burning nigromancers; and, sure enough,
old Adam Warner was advanced to be wizard-in-chief to the king's own
highness a week or two afterwards."
The friar had made a slight movement at the name of Warner; he now
pushed his stool nearer to the principal group, and drew his hood
completely over his countenance.
"Yea!" exclaimed the mechanic, whose son had been the innocent cause
of the memorable siege to poor Adam's dilapidated fortress, related in
the first book of this narrative"--yea; and what did he when there?
Did he not devise a horrible engine for the destruction of the poor,--
an engine that was to do all the work in England by the devil's help?
--so that if a gentleman wanted a coat of mail, or a cloth tunic; if
his dame needed a Norwich worsted; if a yeoman lacked a plough or a
wagon, or his good wife a pot or a kettle; they were to go, not to the
armourer, and the draper, and the tailor, and the weaver, and the
wheelwright, and the blacksmith,--but, hey presto! Master Warner set
his imps a-churning, and turned ye out mail and tunic, worsted and
wagon, kettle and pot, spick and span new, from his brewage of vapour
and sea-coal. Oh, have I not heard enough of the sorcerer from my
brother, who works in the Chepe for Master Stokton, the mercer!--and
Master Stokton was one of the worshipful deputies to whom the old
nigromancer had the front to boast his devices."
"It is true," said the friar, suddenly.
"Yes, reverend father, it is true," said the mechanic, doffing his
cap, and inclining his swarthy face to this unexpected witness of his
veracity. A murmur of wrath and hatred was heard amongst the
bystanders. The soldiers indifferently turned to their female
companions. There was a brief silence; and, involuntarily, the
gossips stretched over the table to catch sight of the house of so
demoniac an oppressor of the poor.
"See," said the baker, "the smoke still curls from the rooftop! I
heard he had come back. Old Madge, his handmaid, has bought cimnel-
cakes of me the last week or so; nothing less than the finest wheat
serves him now, I trow. However, right's right, and--"
"Come back!" cried the fierce mechanic; "the owl hath kept close in
his roost! An' it were not for the king's favour, I would soon see
how the wizard liked to have fire and water brought to bear against
himself!"
"Sit down, sweetheart," whispered one of the young tymbesteres to the
last speaker--
"Come, kiss me, my darling,
Warm kisses I trade for."
"Avaunt!" quoth the mechanic, gruffly, and shaking off the seductive
arm of the tymbestere--"avaunt! I have neither liefe nor halfpence
for thee and thine. Out on thee!--a child of thy years! a rope's end
to thy back were a friend's best kindness!"
The girl's eyes sparkled, she instinctively put her hand to her knife;
then turning to a soldier by her side, she said, "Hear you that, and
sit still?"
"Thunder and wounds!" growled the soldier thus appealed to, "more
respect to the sex, knave; if I don't break thy fool's costard with my
sword-hilt, it is only because Red Grisell can take care of herself
against twenty such lozels as thou. These honest girls have been to
the wars with us; King Edward grudges no man his jolly fere. Speak up
for thyself, Grisell! How many tall fellows didst thou put out of
their pain after the battle of Losecote?"
"Only five, Hal," replied the cold-eyed girl, and showing her
glittering teeth with the grin of a young tigress; "but one was a
captain. I shall do better next time; it was my first battle, thou
knowest!"
The more timid of the bystanders exchanged a glance of horror, and
drew back. The mechanic resumed sullenly,--"I seek no quarrel with
lass or lover. I am a plain, blunt man, with a wife and children, who
are dear to me; and if I have a grudge to the nigromancer, it is
because he glamoured my poor boy Tim. See!"--and he caught up a blue-
eyed, handsome boy, who had been clinging to his side, and baring the
child's arm, showed it to the spectators; there was a large scar on
the limb, and it was shrunk and withered.
"It was my own fault," said the little fellow, deprecatingly. The
affectionate father silenced the sufferer with a cuff on the cheek,
and resumed: "Ye note, neighbours, the day when the foul wizard took
this little one in his arms: well, three weeks afterwards--that very
day three weeks--as he was standing like a lamb by the fire, the good
wife's caldron seethed over, without reason or rhyme, and scalded his
arm till it rivelled up like a leaf in November; and if that is not
glamour, why have we laws against witchcraft?"
"True, true!" groaned the chorus.
The boy, who had borne his father's blow without a murmur, now again
attempted remonstrance. "The hot water went over the gray cat, too,
but Master Warner never bewitched her, daddy."
"He takes his part!--You hear the daff laddy? He takes the old
nigromancer's part,--a sure sign of the witchcraft; but I'll leather
it out of thee, I will!" and the mechanic again raised his weighty
arm. The child did not this time await the blow; he dodged under the
butcher's apron, gained the door, and disappeared. "And he teaches
our own children to fly in our faces!" said the father, in a kind of
whimper. The neighbours sighed in commiseration.
"Oh," he exclaimed in a fiercer tone, grinding his teeth, and shaking
his clenched fist towards Adam Warner's melancholy house, "I say
again, if the king did not protect the vile sorcerer, I would free the
land from his devilries ere his black master could come to his help."
"The king cares not a straw for Master Warner or his inventions, my
son," said a rough, loud voice. All turned, and saw the friar
standing in the midst of the circle. "Know ye not, my children, that
the king sent the wretch neck and crop out of the palace for having
bewitched the Earl of Warwick and his grace the Lord Clarence, so that
they turned unnaturally against their own kinsman, his highness? But
'Manus malorum suos bonos breaket,'--that is to say, the fists of
wicked men only whack their own bones. Ye have all heard tell of
Friar Bungey, my children?"
"Ay, ay!" answered two or three in a breath,--"a wizard, it's true,
and a mighty one; but he never did harm to the poor; though they do
say he made a quaint image of the earl, and--"
"Tut, tut!" interrupted the friar, "all Bungey did was to try to
disenchant the Lord Warwick, whom yon miscreant had spellbound. Poor
Bungey! he is a friend to the people: and when he found that Master
Adam was making a device for their ruin, he spared no toil, I assure
ye, to frustrate the iniquity. Oh, how he fasted and watched! Oh,
how many a time he fought, tooth and nail, with the devil in person,
to get at the infernal invention! for if he had that invention once in
his hands, he could turn it to good account, I can promise ye: and
give ye rain for the green blade and sun for the ripe sheaf. But the
fiend got the better at first; and King Edward, bewitched himself for
the moment, would have hanged Friar Bungey for crossing old Adam, if
he had not called three times, in a loud voice, 'Presto pepranxenon!'
changed himself into a bird, and flown out of the window. As soon as
Master Adam Warner found the field clear to himself, he employed his
daughter to bewitch the Lord Hastings; he set brother against brother,
and made the king and Lord George fall to loggerheads; he stirred up
the rebellion; and where he would have stopped the foul fiend only
knows, if your friend Friar Bungey, who, though a wizard as you say,
is only so for your benefit (and a holy priest into the bargain), had
not, by aid of a good spirit, whom he conjured up in the island of
Tartary, disenchanted the king, and made him see in a dream what the
villanous Warner was devising against his crown and his people,--
whereon his highness sent Master Warner and his daughter back to their
roost, and, helped by Friar Bungey, beat his enemies out of the
kingdom. So, if ye have a mind to save your children from mischief
and malice, ye may set to work with good heart, always provided that
ye touch not old Adam's iron invention. Woe betide ye, if ye think to
destroy that! Bring it safe to Friar Bungey, whom ye will find
returned to the palace, and journeyman's wages will be a penny a day
higher for the next ten years to come!" With these words the friar
threw down his reckoning, and moved majestically to the door.
"An' I might trust you!" said Tim's father, laying hold of the friar's
serge.
"Ye may, ye may!" cried the leader of the tymbesteres, starting up
from the lap of her soldier, "for it is Friar Bungey himself!"
A movement of astonishment and terror was universal. "Friar Bungey
himself!" repeated the burly impostor. "Right, lassie, right; and he
now goes to the palace of the Tower, to mutter good spells in King
Edward's ear,--spells to defeat the malignant ones, and to lower the
price of beer. Wax wobiscum!"
With that salutation, more benevolent than accurate, the friar
vanished from the room; the chief of the tymbesteres leaped lightly on
the table, put one foot on the soldier's shoulder, and sprang through
the open lattice. She found the friar in the act of mounting a sturdy
mule, which had been tied to a post by the door.
"Fie, Graul Skellet! Fie, Graul!" said the conjurer "Respect for my
serge. We must not be noted together out of door in the daylight.
There's a groat for thee. Vade, execrabilis,--that is, good-day to
thee, pretty rogue!"
"A word, friar, a word. Wouldst thou have the old man burned,
drowned, or torn piecemeal? He hath a daughter too, who once sought
to mar our trade with her gittern; a daughter, then in a kirtle that I
would not have nimmed from a hedge, but whom I last saw in sarcenet
and lawn, with a great lord for her fere." The tymbestere's eyes
shone with malignant envy, as she added, "Graul Skellet loves not to
see those who have worn worsted and say walk in sarcenet and lawn.
Graul Skellet loves not wenches who have lords for their feres, and
yet who shrink from Graul and her sisters as the sound from the
leper."
"Fegs," answered the friar, impatiently, "I know naught against the
daughter,--a pretty lass, but too high for my kisses. And as for the
father, I want not the man's life,--that is, not very specially,--but
his model, his mechanical. He may go free, if that can be compassed;
if not, why, the model at all risks. Serve me in this."
"And thou wilt teach me the last tricks of the cards, and thy great
art of making phantoms glide by on the wall?"
"Bring the model intact, and I will teach thee more, Graul,--the dead
man's candle, and the charm of the newt; and I'll give thee, to boot,
the Gaul of the parricide that thou hast prayed me so oft for. Hum!
thou hast a girl in thy troop who hath a blinking eye that well
pleases me; but go now, and obey me. Work before play, and grace
before pudding!"
The tymbestere nodded, snapped her fingers in the air, and humming no
holy ditty, returned to the house through the doorway.
This short conference betrays to the reader the relations, mutually
advantageous, which subsisted between the conjuror and the
tymbesteres. Their troop (the mothers, perchance, of the generation
we treat of) had been familiar to the friar in his old capacity of
mountebank, or tregetour, and in his clerical and courtly elevation,
he did not disdain an ancient connection that served him well with the
populace; for these grim children of vice seemed present in every
place, where pastime was gay, or strife was rampant,--in peace, at the
merry-makings and the hostelries; in war, following the camp, and
seen, at night, prowling through the battlefields to dispatch the
wounded and to rifle the slain: in merrymaking, hostelry, or in camp,
they could thus still spread the fame of Friar Bungey, and uphold his
repute both for terrible lore and for hearty love of the commons.
Nor was this all; both tymbesteres and conjuror were fortune-tellers
by profession. They could interchange the anecdotes each picked up in
their different lines. The tymbestere could thus learn the secrets of
gentle and courtier, the conjuror those of the artisan and mechanic.
Unconscious of the formidable dispositions of their neighbours, Sibyll
and Warner were inhaling the sweet air of the early spring in their
little garden. His disgrace had affected the philosopher less than
might be supposed. True, that the loss of the king's favour was the
deferring indefinitely--perhaps for life--any practical application of
his adored theory; and yet, somehow or other, the theory itself
consoled him. At the worst, he should find some disciple, some
ingenious student, more fortunate than himself, to whom he could
bequeath the secret, and who, when Adam was in his grave, would teach
the world to revere his name. Meanwhile, his time was his own; he was
lord of a home, though ruined and desolate; he was free, with his free
thoughts; and therefore, as he paced the narrow garden, his step was
lighter, his mind less absent than when parched with feverish fear and
hope for the immediate practical success of a principle which was to
be tried before the hazardous tribunal of prejudice and ignorance.
"My child," said the sage, "I feel, for the first time for years, the
distinction of the seasons. I feel that we are walking in the
pleasant spring. Young days come back to me like dreams; and I could
almost think thy mother were once more by my side!"
Sibyll pressed her father's hand, and a soft but melancholy sigh
stirred her rosy lips. She, too, felt the balm of the young year; yet
her father's words broke upon sad and anxious musings. Not to youth
as to age, not to loving fancy as to baffled wisdom, has seclusion
charms that compensate for the passionate and active world! On coming
back to the old house, on glancing round its mildewed walls,
comfortless and bare, the neglected, weed-grown garden, Sibyll had
shuddered in dismay. Had her ambition fallen again into its old
abject state? Were all her hopes to restore her ancestral fortunes,
to vindicate her dear father's fame, shrunk into this slough of actual
poverty,--the butterfly's wings folded back into the chrysalis shroud
of torpor? The vast disparity between herself and Hastings had not
struck her so forcibly at the court; here, at home, the very walls
proclaimed it. When Edward had dismissed the unwelcome witnesses of
his attempted crime, he had given orders that they should be conducted
to their house through the most private ways. He naturally desired to
create no curious comment upon their departure. Unperceived by their
neighbours, Sibyll and her father had gained access by the garden
gate. Old Madge received them in dismay; for she had been in the
habit of visiting Sibyll weekly at the palace, and had gained, in the
old familiarity subsisting, then, between maiden and nurse, some
insight into her heart. She had cherished the fondest hopes for the
fate of her young mistress; and now, to labour and to penury had the
fate returned! The guard who accompanied them, according to Edward's
orders, left some pieces of gold, which Adam rejected, but Madge
secretly received and judiciously expended. And this was all their
wealth. But not of toil nor of penury in themselves thought Sibyll;
she thought but of Hastings,--wildly, passionately, trustfully,
unceasingly, of the absent Hastings. Oh, he would seek her, he would
come, her reverse would but the more endear her to him! Hastings came
not. She soon learned the wherefore. War threatened the land,--he
was at his post, at the head of armies.
Oh, with what panoply of prayer she sought to shield that beloved
breast! And now the old man spoke of the blessed spring, the holiday
time of lovers and of love, and the young girl, sighing, said to her
mournful heart, "The world hath its sun,--where is mine?"
The peacock strutted up to his poor protectors, and spread his plumes
to the gilding beams. And then Sibyll recalled the day when she had
walked in that spot with Marmaduke, and he had talked of his youth,
ambition, and lusty hopes, while, silent and absorbed, she had thought
within herself, "Could the world be open to me as to him,--I too have
ambition, and it should find its goal." Now what contrast between the
two,--the man enriched and honoured, if to-day in peril or in exile,
to-morrow free to march forward still on his career, the world the
country to him whose heart was bold and whose name was stainless! and
she, the woman, brought back to the prison-home, scorn around her,
impotent to avenge, and forbidden to fly! Wherefore?--Sibyll felt her
superiority of mind, of thought, of nature,--wherefore the contrast?
The success was that of man, the discomfiture that of woman. Woe to
the man who precedes his age; but never yet has an age been in which
genius and ambition are safe to woman!
The father and the child turned into their house. The day was
declining. Adam mounted to his studious chamber, Sibyll sought the
solitary servant.
"What tidings, oh, what tidings? The war, you say, is over; the great
earl, his sweet daughter, safe upon the seas, but Hastings--ob,
Hastings! what of him?"
"My bonnibell, my lady-bird, I have none but good tales to tell thee.
I saw and spoke with a soldier who served under Lord Hastings himself;
he is unscathed, he is in London. But they say that one of his bands
is quartered in the suburb, and that there is a report of a rising in
Hertfordshire."
"When will peace come to England and to me!" sighed Sibyll.