TWO SISTERS OF MERCY.
A younger generation has often posed me finely by asking, "What, Sir
Francis! Did you not see _one_ bishop burned? Did you not know _one_
of the martyrs? Did you _never_ come face to face with Queen Mary?" To
all which questions I have one answer, No, and I watch small eyes grow
large with astonishment. But the truth is, a man can only be at one
place at a time. And though, in this very month of February, 1555,
Prebendary Rogers--a good, kindly man, as I have heard, who had a wife
and nine children--was burned in Smithfield in London for religion,
and the Bishop of Gloucester suffered in his own city, and other
inoffensive men were burned to death, and there was much talk of these
things, and in thousands of breasts a smoldering fire was kindled
which blazed high enough by and by--why, I was at Coton End, or on the
London Road, at the time, and learned such things only dimly and by
hearsay.
But the rill joins the river at last; and ofttimes suddenly and at a
bound, as it were. On this very day, while I cantered easily southward
with my face set toward St. Albans, Providence was at work shaping a
niche for me in the lives of certain people who were at the time as
unconscious of my existence as I was of theirs. In a great house in
the Barbican in London there was much stealthy going and coming on
this February afternoon and evening. Behind locked doors, and in fear
and trembling, mails were being packed and bags strapped, and fingers
almost too delicate for the task were busy with nails and hammers,
securing this and closing that. The packers knew nothing of me, nor I
of them. Yet but for me all that packing would have been of no avail;
and but for them my fate might have been very different. Still, the
sound of the hammer did not reach my ears, or, doing so, was covered
by the steady tramp of the roadster; and no vision, so far as I ever
heard, of a dusty youth riding Londonward came between the secret
workers and their task.
I had made up my mind to sleep at St. Albans that night, and for this
reason, and for others relating to the Sheriff of Buckinghamshire, in
which county Stony Stratford lies, I pushed on briskly. I presently
found time, however, to examine the packet of letters of which I had
made spoil. On the outer wrapper I found there was no address, only an
exhortation to be speedy. Off this came, therefore, without ceremony,
and was left in the dirt. Inside I found two sealed epistles, each
countersigned on the wrapper, "Stephen Winton."
"Ho! ho!" said I. "I did well to take them."
Over the signature on the first letter--it seemed to be written on
parchment--were the words, "Haste! haste! haste!" This was the thicker
and heavier of the two, and was addressed to Sir Maurice Berkeley, at
St. Mary Overy's, Southwark, London. I turned it over and over in my
hands, and peeped into it, hesitating. Twice I muttered, "All is fair
in love and war!" And at last, with curiosity fully awake, and a
glance behind me to make sure that the act was unobserved, I broke the
seal. The document proved to be as short and pithy as it was
startling. It was an order commanding Sir Maurice Berkeley forthwith
in the Queen's name, and by the authority of the Council, and so on,
and so on, to arrest Katherine Willoughby de Eresby, Duchess of
Suffolk, and to deliver her into the custody of the Lieutenant of the
Tower, "These presents to be his waranty for the detention of the said
Duchess of Suffolk until her Grace's pleasure in the matter be known."
When it was too late I trembled to think what I had done. To meddle
with matters of state might be more dangerous a hundred times than
stealing horses, or even than ducking the Chancellor's messenger!
Seeing at this moment a party of travelers approach, I crammed the
letter into my pocket, and rode by them with a red face, and a tongue
that stuttered so feebly that I could scarcely return their greetings.
When they had gone by I pulled out the warrant again, having it in my
mind to tear it up without a moment's delay--to tear it into the
smallest morsels, and so get rid of a thing most dangerous. But the
great red seal dangling at the foot of the parchment caught my eye,
and I paused to think. It was so red, so large, so imposing, it seemed
a pity to destroy it. It must surely be good for something. I folded
up the warrant again, and put it away in my safest pocket. Yes, it
might be good for something.
I took out the other letter. It was bound with green ribbon and sealed
with extreme care, being directed simply to Mistress Clarence--there
was no address. But over Gardiner's signature on the wrapper were the
words, "These, on your peril, very privately."
I turned it over and over, and said the same thing about love and war,
and even repeated to myself my old proverb about a sheep and a lamb.
But somehow I could not do it. The letter was a woman's letter; the
secret, her secret; and though my fingers itched as they hovered about
the seals, my cheek tingled too. So at last, with a muttered, "What
would Petronilla say?" I put it away unopened in the pocket where the
warrant lay. The odds were immense that Mistress Clarence would never
get it; but at least her secret should remain hers, my honor mine!
It was dark when I rode, thoroughly jaded, into St. Albans. I was
splashed with mud up to the waist and wetted by a shower, and looked,
I have no doubt, from the effect of my journeying on foot and
horseback, as disreputable a fellow as might be. The consciousness too
that I was without a penny, and the fear lest, careful as I had been
to let no one outsrip me, the news of the riot at Stratford might have
arrived, did not tend to give me assurance. I poked my head timidly
into the great room, hoping that I might have it to myself. To my
disgust it was full of people. Half-a-dozen travelers and as many
townsfolk were sitting round the fire, talking briskly over their
evening draught. Yet I had no choice. I was hungry, and the thing had
to be done, and I swaggered in, something of the sneak, no doubt,
peeping through my bravado. I remarked, as I took my seat by the fire
and set to drying myself, that I was greeted by a momentary silence,
and that two or three of the company began to eye me suspiciously.
There was one man, who sat on the settle in the warmest corner of the
chimney, who seemed in particular to resent my damp neighborhood. His
companions treated him with so much reverence, and he snubbed them so
regularly, that I wondered who he was; and presently, listening to the
conversation which went on round me, I had my curiosity satisfied. He
was no less a personage than the Bailiff of St. Albans, and his manner
befitted such a man; for it seemed to indicate that he thought himself
heir to all the powers of the old Abbots under whose broad thumb his
father and grandfather had groaned.
My conscience pricking me, I felt some misgiving when I saw him, after
staring at me and whispering to two or three of his neighbors, beckon
the landlord aside. His big round face and burly figure gave him a
general likeness to bluff King Hal and he appeared to be aware of this
himself, and to be inclined to ape the stout king's ways, which, I
have heard my uncle say, were ever ways heavy for others' toes. For a
while, however, seeing my supper come in, I forgot him. The bare-armed
girl who brought it to me, and in whom my draggled condition seemed to
provoke feelings of a different nature, lugged up a round table to the
fire. On this she laid my meal, not scrupling to set aside some of the
snug dry townsfolk. Then she set a chair for me well in the blaze, and
folding her arms in her apron stood to watch me fall to. I did so with
a will, and with each mouthful of beef and draught of ale, spirit and
strength came back to me. The cits round me might sneer and shake
their heads, and the travelers smile at my appetite. In five minutes I
cared not a whit! I could give them back joke for joke, and laugh with
the best of them.
Indeed, I had clean forgotten the Bailiff, when he stalked back to his
place. But the moment our eyes met, I guessed there was trouble afoot.
The landlord came with him and stood looking at me, sending off the
wench with a flea in her ear; and I felt under his eye an
uncomfortable consciousness that my purse was empty. Two or three late
arrivals, to whom I suppose Master Bailiff had confided his
suspicions, took their stand also in a half-circle and scanned me
queerly. Altogether it struck me suddenly that I was in a tight place,
and had need of my wits.
"Ahem!" said the Bailiff abruptly, taking skillful advantage of a lull
in the talk. "Where from last, young man?" He spoke in a deep choky
voice, and, if I was not mistaken, he winked one of his small eyes in
the direction of his friends, as though to say, "Now see me pose him!"
But I only put another morsel in my mouth. For a moment indeed the
temptation to reply "Towcester," seeing that such a journey over a
middling road was something to brag of before the Highway Law came in,
almost overcame me. But in time I bethought me of Stephen Gardiner's
maxim, "Be slow to speak!" and I put another morsel in my mouth.
The Bailiff's face grew red, or rather, redder. "Come, young man, did
you hear me speak?" he said pompously. "Where from last?"
"From the road, sir," I replied, turning to him as if I had not heard
him before. "And a very wet road it was."
A man who sat next me chuckled, being apparently a stranger like
myself. But the Bailiff puffed himself into a still more striking
likeness to King Henry, and including him in his scowl shouted at me,
"Sirrah! don't bandy words with me! Which way did you come along the
road, I asked."
It was on the tip of my tongue to answer saucily, "The right way!" But
I reflected that I might be stopped; and to be stopped might mean to
be hanged at worst, and something very unpleasant at best. So I
controlled myself, and answered--though the man's arrogance was
provoking enough--"I have come from Stratford, and I am going to
London. Now you know as much as I do."
"Do I?" he said, with a sneer and a wink at the landlord.
"Yes, I think so," I answered patiently.
"Well, I don't!" he retorted, in vulgar triumph. "I don't. It is my
opinion that you have come from London."
I went on with my supper.
"Do you hear?" he asked pompously, sticking his arms akimbo and
looking round for sympathy. "You will have to give an account of
yourself, young man. We will have no penniless rogues and sturdy
vagabonds wandering about St. Albans."
"Penniless rogues do not go a-horseback," I answered. But it was
wonderful how my spirits sank again under that word "penniless." It
hit me hard.
"Wait a bit," he said, raising his finger to command attention for his
next question. "What is your religion, young man?"
"Oh!" I replied, putting down my knife and looking open scorn at him,
"you are an inquisitor, are you?" At which words of mine there was a
kind of stir. "You would burn me as I hear they burned Master Sandars
at Coventry last week, would you? They were talking about it down the
road."
"You will come to a bad end, young man!" he retorted viciously, his
outstretched finger shaking as if the palsy had seized him. For this
time my taunt had gone home, and more than one of the listeners
standing on the outer edge of the group, and so beyond his ken, had
muttered "shame." More than one face had grown dark. "You will come to
a bad end!" he repeated. "If it be not here, then somewhere else! It
is my opinion that you have come from London, and that you have been
in trouble. There is a hue-and-cry out for a young fellow just your
age, and a cock of your hackle, I judge, who is wanted for heresy. A
Londoner too. You do not leave here until you have given an account of
yourself, Master Jack-a-Dandy!" The party had all risen round me, and
some of the hindmost had got on benches to see me the better. Among
these, between two bacon flitches, I caught a glimpse of the
serving-maid's face as she peered at me, pale and scared, and a queer
impulse led me to nod to her--a reassuring little nod. I found myself
growing cool and confident, seeing myself so cornered.
"Easy! easy!" I said, "let a man finish his supper and get warmed in
peace."
"Bishop Bonner will warm you!" cried the Bailiff.
"I dare say--as they warm people in Spain!" I sneered.
"He will be Bishop Burner to you!" shrieked the Bailiff, almost beside
himself with rage at being so bearded by a lad.
"Take care!" I retorted. "Do not you speak evil of dignitaries, or you
will be getting into trouble!"
He fairly writhed under this rejoinder.
"Landlord!" he spluttered. "I shall hold you responsible! If this
person leaves your house, and is not forthcoming when wanted, you will
suffer for it!"
The landlord scratched his head, being a good-natured fellow; but a
bailiff is a bailiff, especially at St. Albans. And I was muddy and
travel-stained, and quick of my tongue for one so young; which the
middle-aged never like, though the old bear it better. He hesitated.
"Do not be a fool, Master Host!" I said. "I have something
here----" and I touched my pocket, which happened to be near my
sword-hilt--"that will make you rue it if you interfere with me!"
"Ho! ho!" cried the Bailiff, in haste and triumph. "So that is his
tone! We have a tavern-brawler here, have we! A young swashbuckler!
His tongue will not run so fast when he finds his feet in the stocks.
Master landlord, call the watch! Call the watch at once, I command
you!"
"You will do so at your peril!" I said sternly. Then, seeing that my
manner had some effect upon all save the angry official, I gave way to
the temptation to drive the matter home and secure my safety by the
only means that seemed possible. It is an old story that one deception
leads inevitably to another. I solemnly drew out the white staff I had
taken from the apparitor. "Look here!" I continued, waving it. "Do you
see this, you booby? I am traveling in the Queen's name, and on her
service. By special commission, too, from the Chancellor! Is that
plain speaking enough for you? And let me tell you, Master Bailiff," I
added, fixing my eye upon him, "that my business is private, and that
my Lord of Winchester will not be best pleased when he hears how I
have had to declare myself. Do you think the Queen's servants go
always in cloth of gold, you fool? The stocks indeed!"
I laughed out loudly and without effort, for there never was anything
so absurd as the change in the Bailiff's visage. His color fled, his
cheeks grew pendulous, his lip hung loose. He stared at me, gasping
like a fish out of water, and seemed unable to move toe or finger. The
rest enjoyed the scene, as people will enjoy a marvelous sudden stroke
of fortune. It was as good as a stage pageant to them. They could not
take their eyes from the pocket in which I had replaced my wand, and
continued, long after I had returned to my meal, to gaze at me in
respectful silence. The crestfallen Bailiff presently slipped out, and
I was left cock of the walk, and for the rest of the evening enjoyed
the fruits of victory.
They proved to be more substantial than I had expected, for, as I was
on my way upstairs to bed, the landlord preceding me with a light, a
man accosted me, and beckoned me aside mysteriously.
"The Bailiff is very much annoyed," he said, speaking in a muffled
voice behind his hand, while his eyes peered into mine.
"Well, what is that to me?" I replied, looking sternly at him. I was
tired and sleepy after my meal. "He should not make such a fool of
himself."
"Tut, tut, tut, tut! You misunderstood me, young sir," the man
answered, plucking my sleeve as I turned away. "He regrets the
annoyance he has caused you. A mistake, he says, a pure mistake, and
he hopes you will have forgotten it by morning." Then, with a skillful
hand, which seemed not unused to the task, he slid two coins into my
palm. I looked at them, for a moment not perceiving his drift. Then I
found they were two gold angels, and I began to understand. "Ahem!" I
said, fingering them uneasily. "Yes. Well, well, I will look over it,
I will look over it! Tell him from me," I continued, gaining
confidence as I proceeded with my new role, "that he shall hear no
more about it. He is zealous--perhaps over zealous!"
"That is it!" muttered the envoy eagerly; "that is it, my dear sir!
You see perfectly how it is. He is zealous. Zealous in the Queen's
service!"
"To be sure; and so I will report him. Tell him that so I will report
him. And here, my good friend, take one of these for yourself," I
added, magnificently giving him back half my fortune--young donkey
that I was. "Drink to the Queen's health; and so good-night to you."
He went away, bowing to the very ground, and, when the landlord
likewise had left me, I was very merry over this, being in no mood for
weighing words. The world seemed--to be sure, the ale was humming in
my head, and I was in the landlord's best room--easy enough to
conquer, provided one possessed a white staff. The fact that I had no
right to mine only added--be it remembered I was young and foolish--to
my enjoyment of its power. I went to bed in all comfort with it under
my pillow, and slept soundly, untroubled by any dream of a mischance.
But when did a lie ever help a man in the end?
When I awoke, which I seemed to do on a sudden, it was still dark. I
wondered for a moment where I was, and what was the meaning of the
shouting and knocking I heard. Then, discerning the faint outline of
the window, I remembered the place in which I had gone to bed, and I
sat up and listened. Some one--nay, several people--were drumming and
kicking against the wooden doors of the inn-yard, and shouting
besides, loud enough to raise the dead. In the next room to mine I
caught the grumbling voices of persons disturbed, like myself, from
sleep. And by and by a window was opened, and I heard the landlord ask
what was the matter.
"In the Queen's name!" came the loud, impatient answer, given in a
voice that rose above the ring of bridles and the stamping of iron
hoofs, "open! and that quickly, Master Host. The watch are here, and
we must search."
I waited to hear no more. I was out of bed, and huddling on my
clothes, and thrusting my feet into my boots, like one possessed. My
heart was beating as fast as if I had been running in a race, and my
hands were shaking with the shock of the alarm. The impatient voice
without was Master Pritchard's, and it rang with all the vengeful
passion which I should have expected that gentleman, duped, ducked,
and robbed, to be feeling. There would be little mercy to be had at
his hands. Moreover, my ears, grown as keen for the moment as the
hunted hare's, distinguished the tramping of at least half-a-dozen
horses, so that it was clear that he had come with a force at his
back. Resistance would be useless. My sole chance lay in flight--if
flight should still be possible.
Even in my haste I did not forsake the talisman which had served me so
well, but stayed an instant to thrust it into my pocket. The Cluddes
have, I fancy, a knack of keeping cool in emergencies, getting,
indeed, the cooler the greater the stress.
By this time the inn was thoroughly aroused. Doors were opening and
shutting on all sides of me, and questions were being shouted in
different tones from room to room. In the midst of the hubbub I heard
the landlord come out muttering, and go downstairs to open the door.
Instantly I unlatched mine, slipped through it stealthily, sneaked a
step or two down the passage, and then came plump in the dark against
some one who was moving as softly as myself. The surprise was
complete, and I should have cried out at the unexpected collision, had
not the unknown laid a cold hand on my mouth, and gently pushed me
back into my room.
Here there was now a faint glimmer of dawn, and by this I saw that my
companion was the serving-maid. "Hist!" she said, speaking under her
breath, "Is it you they want?"
I nodded.
"I thought so," she muttered. "Then you must get out through your
window. You cannot pass them. They are a dozen or more, and armed.
Quick! knot this about the bars. It is no great depth to the bottom,
and the ground is soft from the rain."
She tore, as she spoke, the coverlet from the bed, and, twisting it
into a kind of rope, helped me to secure one corner of it about the
window-bar. "When you are down," she whispered, "keep along the wall
to the right until you come to a haystack. Turn to the left there--you
will have to ford the water--and you will soon be clear of the town.
Look about you then, and you will see a horse-track, which leads to
Elstree, running in a line with the London Road, but a mile from it
and through woods. At Elstree any path to the left will take you to
Barnet, and not two miles lost."
"Heaven bless you!" I said, turning from the gloom, the dark sky, and
driving scud without to peer gratefully at her. "Heaven bless you for
a good woman!"
"And God keep you for a bonny boy," she whispered.
I kissed her, forcing into her hands--a thing the remembrance of which
is very pleasant to me to this day--my last piece of gold.
A moment more, and I stood unhurt, but almost up to my knees in mud,
in an alley bounded on both sides, as far as I could see, by blind
walls. Stopping only to indicate by a low whistle that I was safe, I
turned and sped away as fast as I could run in the direction which she
had pointed out. There was no one abroad, and in a shorter time than I
had expected I found myself outside the town, traveling over a kind of
moorland tract bounded in the distance by woods.
Here I picked up the horse-track easily enough, and without stopping,
save for a short breathing space, hurried along it, to gain the
shelter of the trees. So far so good! I had reason to be thankful. But
my case was still an indifferent one. More than once in getting out of
the town I had slipped and fallen. I was wet through, and plastered
with dirt owing to these mishaps; and my clothes were in a woeful
plight. For a time excitement kept me up, however, and I made good
way, warmed by the thought that I had again baffled the great Bishop.
It was only when the day had come, and grown on to noon, and I saw no
sign of any pursuers, that thought got the upper hand. Then I began to
compare, with some bitterness of feeling, my present condition--wet,
dirty, and homeless--with that which I had enjoyed only a week before;
and it needed all my courage to support me. Skulking, half famished,
between Barnet and Tottenham, often compelled to crouch in ditches or
behind walls while travelers went by, and liable each instant to have
to leave the highway and take to my heels, I had leisure to feel; and
I did feel, more keenly, I think, that afternoon than at any later
time, the bitterness of fortune. I cursed Stephen Gardiner a dozen
times, and dared not let my thoughts wander to my father. I had said
that I would build my house afresh. Well, truly I was building it from
the foundation.
It added very much to my misery that it rained all day a cold,
half-frozen rain. The whole afternoon I spent in hiding, shivering and
shaking in a hole under a ledge near Tottenham; being afraid to go
into London before nightfall, lest I should be waited for at the gate
and be captured. Chilled and bedraggled as I was, and weak through
want of food which I dared not go out to beg, the terrors of capture
got hold of my mind and presented to me one by one every horrible form
of humiliation, the stocks, the pillory, the cart-tail; so that even
Master Pritchard, could he have seen me and known my mind, might have
pitied me; so that I loathe to this day the hours I spent in that foul
hiding-place. Between a man's best and worse, there is little but a
platter of food.
The way this was put an end to, I well remember. An old woman came
into the field where I lay hid, to drive home a cow. I had had my eyes
on this cow for at least an hour, having made up my mind to milk it
for my own benefit as soon as the dusk fell. In my disappointment at
seeing it driven off, and also out of a desire to learn whether the
old dame might not be going to milk it in a corner of the pasture, in
which case I might still get an after taste, I crawled so far out of
my hole that, turning suddenly, she caught sight of me. I expected to
see her hurry off, but she did not. She took a long look, and then
came back toward me, making, however, as it seemed to me, as if she
did not see me. When she had come within a few feet of me, she looked
down abruptly, and our eyes met. What she saw in mine I can only
guess. In hers I read a divine pity. "Oh, poor lad!" she murmured;
"oh, you poor, poor lad!" and there were tears in her voice.
I was so weak--it was almost twenty-four hours since I had tasted
food, and I had come twenty-four miles in the time--that at that I
broke down, and cried like a child.
I learned later that the old woman took me for just the same person
for whom the Bailiff at St. Albans had mistaken me, a young apprentice
named Hunter, who had got into trouble about religion, and was at this
time hiding up and down the country; Bishop Bonner having clapped his
father into jail until the son should come to hand. But her kind heart
knew no distinction of creeds. She took me to her cottage as soon as
night fell, and warmed, and dried, and fed me. She did not dare to
keep me under her roof for longer than an hour or two, neither would I
have stayed to endanger her. But she sent me out a new man, with a
crust, moreover, in my pocket. A hundred times between Tottenham and
Aldersgate I said "God bless her!" And I say so now.
So twice in one day, and that the gloomiest day of my life, I was
succored by a woman. I have never forgotten it. I have tried to keep
it always in mind; remembering too a saying of my uncle's, that "there
is nothing on earth so merciful as a good woman, or so pitiless as a
bad one!"