Traffic is thy god.--Timon.
"By my faith!" cried the Earl of Darby, as soon as they found
themselves in the street, or rather lane, before the dwelling of Sir
Cesar, "I know not in the least where we are; and if I had known it
before, my brain is so unsettled with all this strange sight, that I
should have forgotten it now. Which way did we turn?"
"The other way! the other way!" cried Sir Osborne, "and then to the
right."
"Pray, sir, can you tell me where the devil I am?" demanded the earl,
when they had reached the bottom of the lane, addressing a man who was
walking slowly past.
"I'll tell you what, my young gallant," answered the man, "if you
don't march home with your foolery, I'll lock you up. I am the
constable of the watch."
"It is my _way_ home that I want to know, friend constable," replied
the earl. "For, 'fore God! I know not where I am any more than a
new-born child, who, though he comes into the world without asking the
way, finds himself very strange when he is in it."
"Why, marry, thou art at the back of Baynard's Castle, sir fool,"
replied the constable.
"Ay; then I shall find my road," said the earl. "Thank thee, honest
constable; thou art a pleasant fellow, and a civil, and hast risked
having thy pate broken to-night more than thou knowest. So, fare thee
well!" and turning away, he led his companion through various winding
lanes into a broader street, which at length conducted them to the
mansion of the Duke of Buckingham.
"Now, by my faith, Darnley, or Maurice, or whatever you please to be
called," said the earl, "if you have any hospitality in your nature,
you will give me board and lodging for a night. May you make so free
with the good duke's house?"
"Most willingly will I do it," said Sir Osborne, "and find myself now
doubly happy in his grace's request, to use his mansion as if it were
my own."
"Were I you," said Lord Darby, "and had so much of Buckingham's
regard, I would hear more of that strange man, if he be a man, Sir
Cesar; for 'tis said that the duke and Sir John Morton are the only
persons that know who and what he really is. God help us! we have seen
as strange a sight to-night as mortal eyes ever beheld."
"I have heard one of my companions in arms relate that a circumstance
precisely similar happened to himself in Italy," replied the knight.
"The famous magician, Cornelius Agrippa, showed him out of friendship
a glass, wherein he beheld the lady of his love reading one of his own
letters,[10] which thing she was doing, as he ascertained afterwards,
at the very minute and day that the glass was shown to him. I never
thought, however, to have seen anything like it myself."
It may be easily supposed that various were the remarks and
conjectures of the two young noblemen during the rest of the evening,
but with these it will be unnecessary to trouble the reader. Suffice
it that we have translated as literally as possible the account which
Vonderbrugius gives of the circumstances; nor shall we make any
comment on the facts, leaving it to the reader's own mind to form what
conclusion he may think right. Whether the whole was an artifice on
the part of Sir Cesar, aided by strongly-excited imagination on
theirs, each person must judge for himself; but certain it is that
they both firmly believed that they saw the same thing; and, as in the
well-known case of Lord Surrey, the argument is of avail, that the
magician had no object or interest in deceiving those to whom he
displayed his powers. The effect, however, upon the mind of Sir
Osborne was to give him new hope and courage; for so completely had
the former prediction of Sir Cesar been fulfilled, that though he
might still doubt, yet his very hesitation leant to the side of hope.
Lord Darby laughed, and vowed 'twas strange, 'twas passing strange,
and wrote it down in his tablets, lest he should not believe a word of
it the next morning. When the morning came, however, he found that his
belief had not fled; and before leaving Sir Osborne, he talked over
the business with more gravity than he could usually command. Many
arrangements also were necessary to be made in regard to the knight's
introduction to the court; but at length it was agreed that the earl
should account for his acquaintance with Sir Osborne by saying that
their parents had been friends, and that, having been educated in the
court of Burgundy, the knight was then in England for the first time
since his youth.
"All this is true," said Lord Darby, "for my father was well known to
yours, though, perhaps, they could hardly be called friends; but,
however, there are not above two grains of lie to an ounce of truth,
so it will poison no one."
When all their plans were finally settled, Lord Darby took leave of
the knight, and left him to make his preparations for the next
morning. As soon as he had departed, Sir Osborne called for his horse,
and, accompanied by Longpole, of whom he had seen little since his
arrival in London, set out for the house of the honest Flemish
merchant, William Hans, from whom, as we have said, he expected sundry
sums of money.
As they proceeded, the worthy custrel, who, for the purpose of showing
him the way, rode by his side (permitting him, nevertheless, to keep
about a yard in advance), did not fail to take advantage of their
proximity to regale the knight's ears with many a quaint remark upon
the great bee-hive, as he called it, in which they were.
"Lord! Lord!" said he, "to think of the swarm of honey-getting, or
rather money-getting insects, that here toil from morn to night, but
to pile up within their narrow cells that sweet trash which, after
all, is none of theirs; for ever and anon comes my good lord king, the
master of the hive, and smokes them for a subsidy. Look at yon fat
fellow, your worship! For God's sake, look at him! How proud he seems,
waddling forward under the majesty of his belly! Well, if a paunch
like that be the damnation attached to an alderman's gown, heaven
absolve me from city feasts, I say! And his lean follower; see! with
the quill behind his ear, and inkhorn at his button, so meagre, as if
he wished to mock his master's fatness. Oh! 'tis the way, 'tis the
way; the fat merchant seems to absorb all the lean clerk's portion.
Everything begets its like; fat gets fat, riches get riches, and even
leanness grows more lean, as it were, by living upon itself. Now to
the left, your worship, up that paved court."
The house of the merchant now stood before them, and Sir Osborne,
dismounting from his horse, advanced to the door of what seemed to be
a small dark counting-house, in which he found an old man, with many a
book and many a slate before him, busily employed in adding to the
multitude of little black marks with which the page under his eyes was
cumbered.
In answer to the knight's inquiry for Master William Hans, he replied
that he was in the warehouse, where he might find him if he wished to
see him. "Stay, stay! I will show you the way," cried he, with ready
politeness. "Lord, sir! our warehouse is a wilderness, wherein a man
might lose himself with blessed facility. Thanks be to God therefor;
for on May-day, three years last past, called 'Evil May-day,' we
should have lost our good master, when the prentices, and watermen,
and pick-purses, and vagabonds, broke into all the aliens' houses, and
injured many; but, happily, he hid himself under a pile of stockfish,
which was in the far end of the little warehouse, to the left of the
barrel-room, so that they found him not."
While he pronounced this oration, the old clerk locked carefully the
door of the counting-house, and led the knight into an immense vaulted
chamber, wherein were piled on every side all kinds of things, of
every sort and description that human ingenuity can apply to the
supply of its necessities or the gratification of its appetites. On
one side were displayed a thousand articles of foreign produce or
manufacture brought thither for the English market, and on the other
appeared the various productions of England, destined soon to be
spread over half the world. The objects that met the eye were not more
various than the smells that assailed the nose. Here was the delicious
odour of salted fish, there the delicate scent of whale oil; here dry
skins spread their perfume around, and there a cask of fresh tallow
wasted its sweetness on the warehouse air; while through the whole was
perceived, as a general medium for all the rest, the agglomerated
stink of a hundred unventilated years.
Making his way through all, Sir Osborne proceeded directly towards the
spot where a small window in the roof poured its light upon a large
barrel, the contents of which were undergoing inspection by the worthy
Fleming whom he sought. In Flanders the knight had known the good
burgess well, and had been sure to receive a visit from him whenever
business had called his steps from his adopted to his native country.
There might be both an eye to gratitude and an eye to interest in this
proceeding of Master William Hans; for the knight had twice procured
him a large commission for the army, and, what was still more in those
days, had procured him payment.
On perceiving his visitor in the present instance, the merchant caught
up his black furred gown, which he had thrown off while busied in less
dignified occupations, and having hastily insinuated his arms into the
sleeves, advanced to meet the knight with a bow of profound respect.
"Welcome back to England, my lord!" cried he, in very good English,
which could only be distinguished as proceeding from the mouth of a
foreigner by a slight accent and a peculiar intonation. "Coot now, my
lord, I hope you have not given up your company in Flanders. I have
such a cargo of beans in the mouth of the Scheldt, it would have
suited the army very well indeet."
"But, my good Master Hans," answered the knight, "the army itself is
given up since the peace. When I left Lisle, there were scarce three
companies left."
After a good deal more of such preliminary conversation, in the course
of which the knight explained to the merchant the necessity of keeping
his name and title secret for the present, they proceeded to the
arrangement of those affairs which yet remained unconcluded between
them. Conducting the knight back to the counting-house, William Hans
turned over several of his great books, looking for the accounts.
"Here it is, I think," he cried, at length. "No! that is the Lady de
Grey's."
"Lady Constance de Grey?" demanded Sir Osborne, in some surprise.
"Yes, yes!" answered the merchant. "I receive all the money for her
mother's estates, who was a French lady. Did for her father, too, till
the coot old lord died. Oh! it was hard work in the time of the war;
but I got a Paris Jew to transmit the money to a Flemish Jew, who sent
it over to me. They cot ten per cent. the thieves! for commission, but
that very thing saved the estates; for they would have been forfeited
by the old king Louis, if the Jew, who had given him money in his
need, had not made such a noise about it, for fear of losing his ten
per cent, that the king let it pass. Ah! here is the account. First,
we have not settled since I furnished the wine for the companie, when
they had the fever. Five hundred chioppines of wine, at a croat the
chioppine, make just twenty-five marks: received thirty marks; five
carried to your name. Then for the ransom of the Sire de Beaujeu: you
put him at a ransom of two thousand crowns, not knowing who he was,
but he has sent you six thousand; because, he says, he would not be
ransomed like an écuyer. Creat fool! Why the devil, when he could get
off for a little, pay a much?"[11]
"No true knight but would do the same," replied Sir Osborne. "It was
only by my permission that he got away at all: therefore he was bound
in honour to pay the full ransom of a person of his condition."
"Well, then," said the Fleming, "here comes the ransom of two
esquires, gentlemen they call themselves, five hundred crowns each,
making in the whole seven thousand crowns, or two thousand six hundred
and twenty-five marks. Then there is against you, freight and carriage
of armour and goods, four marks; exchange and commission, three marks;
porterage, a croat; warehouse-room, two croats: balance for you, two
thousand six hundred and seventeen marks, five shillings, and two
croats, which I am ready to pay you, as well as to deliver the two
suits of harness and the packages."
"The money, at present, I do not want," replied Sir Osborne; "but I
will be glad if you would send the arms, and the rest of the packages,
to the manor of the Rose, in St. Lawrence Poultney."
"To the coot Duke of Buckingham's? Ah! that I will, that I will! But I
hope you will stay and take your noon-meal with me; though I know you
men of war do not like the company of us merchants. But I will say, I
have never found you any way proud."
"I would most willingly, Master Hans," answered the knight; "but I go
to the court to-morrow for the first time, and I have no small
preparation to make with tailors and broiderers."
"Oh! stay with me, stay with me, and I will fit you to your desire,"
answered the Fleming. "There is a tailor lives hard by who will suit
you well. I am not going to give you a man who can make nothing but a
burgomaster's gown or a merchant's doublet. I know your coot
companions would laugh, and say you had had a merchant's tailor; but
this is a man who, if you like it, shall stuff out your breeches till
you can't sit down, make all the seams by a plumb-line, tighten your
girdle till you have no more waist than a wasp; and, moreover, he is
tailor to the Duke of Suffolk."
The knight found this recommendation quite sufficient; and agreeing to
dine with the honest Fleming, the tailor was sent for, who, with a
great display of sartorial learning, devised several suits, in which
Sir Osborne might appear at court, without being either so gaudy as
the butterflies of the day, or so plain as to call particular
attention. The only difficulty was to know whether the tailor could
furnish a complete suit for the knight, and one for each of his four
attendants, by the next morning; but after much calculation, and
summing up of all the friendly tailors within his knowledge, he
undertook to do it; and, what is wonderful for a tailor, kept his
word.