"Give me the poor allottery my father left me by testament, with that I
will go buy me fortunes."
"Get you with him, you old dog."
_As You Like It_.
The officials of the New Forest have ever since the days of the
Conqueror enjoyed some of the pleasantest dwellings that southern
England can boast.
The home of the Birkenholt family was not one of the least delightful.
It stood at the foot of a rising ground, on which grew a grove of
magnificent beeches, their large silvery boles rising majestically like
columns into a lofty vaulting of branches, covered above with tender
green foliage. Here and there the shade beneath was broken by the
gilding of a ray of sunshine on a lower twig, or on a white trunk, but
the floor of the vast arcades was almost entirely of the russet brown of
the fallen leaves, save where a fern or holly bush made a spot of green.
At the foot of the slope lay a stretch of pasture ground, some parts
covered by "lady-smocks, all silver white," with the course of the
little stream through the midst indicated by a perfect golden river of
shining kingcups interspersed with ferns. Beyond lay tracts of brown
heath and brilliant gorse and broom, which stretched for miles and miles
along the flats, while the dry ground was covered with holly brake, and
here and there woods of oak and beech made a sea of verdure, purpling in
the distance.
Cultivation was not attempted, but hardy little ponies, cows, goats,
sheep, and pigs were feeding, and picking their way about in the marshy
mead below, and a small garden of pot-herbs, inclosed by a strong fence
of timber, lay on the sunny side of a spacious rambling forest lodge,
only one story high, built of solid timber and roofed with shingle. It
was not without strong pretensions to beauty, as well as to
picturesqueness, for the posts of the door, the architecture of the deep
porch, the frames of the latticed windows, and the verge boards were all
richly carved in grotesque devices. Over the door was the royal shield,
between a pair of magnificent antlers, the spoils of a deer reported to
have been slain by King Edward the Fourth, as was denoted by the
"glorious sun of York" carved beneath the shield.
In the background among the trees were ranges of stables and kennels,
and on the grass-plat in front of the windows was a row of beehives. A
tame doe lay on the little green sward, not far from a large rough deer-
hound, both close friends who could be trusted at large. There was a
mournful dispirited look about the hound, evidently an aged animal, for
the once black muzzle was touched with grey, and there was a film over
one of the keen beautiful eyes, which opened eagerly as he pricked his
ears and lifted his head at the rattle of the door latch. Then, as two
boys came out, he rose, and with a slowly waving tail, and a wistful
appealing air, came and laid his head against one of the pair who had
appeared in the pont. They were lads of fourteen and fifteen, clad in
suits of new mourning, with the short belted doublet, puffed hose, small
ruffs and little round caps of early Tudor times. They had dark eyes
and hair, and honest open faces, the younger ruddy and sunburnt, the
elder thinner and more intellectual--and they were so much the same size
that the advantage of age was always supposed to be on the side of
Stephen, though he was really the junior by nearly a year. Both were
sad and grave, and the eyes and cheeks of Stephen showed traces of
recent floods of tears, though there was more settled dejection on the
countenance of his brother.
"Ay, Spring," said the lad, "'tis winter with thee now. A poor old
rogue! Did the new housewife talk of a halter because he showed his
teeth when her ill-nurtured brat wanted to ride on him? Nay, old
Spring, thou shalt share thy master's fortunes, changed though they be.
Oh, father! father! didst thou guess how it would be with thy boys!"
And throwing himself on the grass, he hid his face against the dog and
sobbed.
"Come, Stephen, Stephen; 'tis time to play the man! What are we to do
out in the world if you weep and wail?"
"She might have let us stay for the month's mind," was heard from
Stephen.
"Ay, and though we might be more glad to go, we might carry bitterer
thoughts along with us. Better be done with it at once, say I."
"There would still be the Forest! And I saw the moorhen sitting yester
eve! And the wild ducklings are out on the pool, and the woods are full
of song. Oh! Ambrose! I never knew how hard it is to part--"
"Nay, now, Steve, where be all your plots for bravery? You always meant
to seek your fortune--not bide here like an acorn for ever."
"I never thought to be thrust forth the very day of our poor father's
burial, by a shrewish town-bred vixen, and a base narrow-souled--"
"Hist! hist!" said the more prudent Ambrose.
"Let him hear who will! He cannot do worse for us than he has done!
All the Forest will cry shame on him for a mean-hearted skinflint to
turn his brothers from their home, ere their father and his, be cold in
his grave," cried Stephen, clenching the grass with his hands, in his
passionate sense of wrong.
"That's womanish," said Ambrose.
"Who'll be the woman when the time comes for drawing cold steel?" cried
Stephen, sitting up.
At that moment there came through the porch a man, a few years over
thirty, likewise in mourning, with a paler, sharper countenance than the
brothers, and an uncomfortable pleading expression of self-
justification.
"How now, lads!" he said, "what means this? You have taken the matter
too hastily. There was no thought that ye should part till you had some
purpose in view. Nay, we should be fain for Ambrose to bide on here, so
he would leave his portion for me to deal with, and teach little Will
his primer and accidence. You are a quiet lad, Ambrose, and can rule
your tongue better than Stephen."
"Thanks, brother John," said Ambrose, somewhat sarcastically, "but where
Stephen goes I go."
"I would--I would have found Stephen a place among the prickers or
rangers, if--" hesitated John. "In sooth, I would yet do it, if he
would make it up with the housewife."
"My father looked higher for his son than a pricker's office," returned
Ambrose.
"That do I wot," said John, "and therefore, 'tis for his own good that I
would send him forth. His godfather, our uncle Birkenholt, he will
assuredly provide for him, and set him forth--"
The door of the house was opened, and a shrewish voice cried, "Mr
Birkenholt--here, husband! You are wanted. Here's little Kate crying
to have yonder smooth pouch to stroke, and I cannot reach it for her."
"Father set store by that otter-skin pouch, for poor Prince Arthur slew
the otter," cried Stephen. "Surely, John, you'll not let the babes make
a toy of that?"
John made a helpless gesture, and at a renewed call, went indoors.
"You are right, Ambrose," said Stephen, "this is no place for us. Why
should we tarry any longer to see everything moiled and set at nought?
I have couched in the forest before, and 'tis summer time."
"Nay," said Ambrose, "we must make up our fardels and have our money in
our pouches before we can depart. We must tarry the night, and call
John to his reckoning, and so might we set forth early enough in the
morning to lie at Winchester that night and take counsel with our uncle
Birkenholt."
"I would not stop short at Winchester," said Stephen. "London for me,
where uncle Randall will find us preferment!"
"And what wilt do for Spring!"
"Take him with me, of course!" exclaimed Stephen. "What! would I leave
him to be kicked and pinched by Will, and hanged belike by Mistress
Maud?"
"I doubt me whether the poor old hound will brook the journey."
"Then I'll carry him!"
Ambrose looked at the big dog as if he thought it would be a serious
undertaking, but he had known and loved Spring as his brother's property
ever since his memory began, and he scarcely felt that they could be
separable for weal or woe.
The verdurers of the New Forest were of gentle blood, and their office
was well-nigh hereditary. The Birkenholts had held it for many
generations, and the reversion passed as a matter of course to the
eldest son of the late holder, who had newly been laid in the burial-
ground of Beaulieu Abbey. John Birkenholt, whose mother had been of
knightly lineage, had resented his father's second marriage with the
daughter of a yeoman on the verge of the Forest, suspected of a strain
of gipsy blood, and had lived little at home, becoming a sort of agent
at Southampton for business connected with the timber which was yearly
cut in the Forest to supply material for the shipping. He had wedded
the daughter of a person engaged in law business at Southampton, and had
only been an occasional visitor at home, ever after the death of his
stepmother. She had left these two boys, unwelcome appendages in his
sight. They had obtained a certain amount of education at Beaulieu
Abbey, where a school was kept, and where Ambrose daily studied, though
for the last few months Stephen had assisted his father in his forest
duties.
Death had come suddenly to break up the household in the early spring of
1515, and John Birkenholt had returned as if to a patrimony, bringing
his wife and children with him. The funeral ceremonies had been
conducted at Beaulieu Abbey on the extensive scale of the sixteenth
century, the requiem, the feast, and the dole, all taking place there,
leaving the Forest lodge in its ordinary quiet.
It had always been understood that on their father's death the two
younger sons must make their own way in the world; but he had hoped to
live until they were a little older, when he might himself have started
them in life, or expressed his wishes respecting them to their elder
brother. As it was, however, there was no commendation of them, nothing
but a strip of parchment, drawn up by one of the monks of Beaulieu,
leaving each of them twenty crowns, with a few small jewels and
properties left by their own mother, while everything else went to their
brother.
There might have been some jealousy excited by the estimation in which
Stephen's efficiency--boy as he was--was evidently held by the plain-
spoken underlings of the verdurer; and this added to Mistress
Birkenholt's dislike to the presence of her husband's half-brothers,
whom she regarded as interlopers without a right to exist. Matters were
brought to a climax by old Spring's resentment at being roughly teased
by her spoilt children. He had done nothing worse than growl and show
his teeth, but the town-bred dame had taken alarm, and half in terror,
half in spite, had insisted on his instant execution, since he was too
old to be valuable. Stephen, who loved the dog only less than he loved
his brother Ambrose, had come to high words with her; and the end of the
altercation had been that she had declared that she would suffer no
great lubbers of the half-blood to devour her children's inheritance,
and teach them ill manners, and that go they must, and that instantly.
John had muttered a little about "not so fast, dame," and "for very
shame," but she had turned on him, and rated him with a violence that
demonstrated who was ruler in the house, and took away all disposition
to tarry long under the new dynasty.
The boys possessed two uncles, one on each side of the house. Their
father's elder brother had been a man-at-arms, having preferred a
stirring life to the Forest, and had fought in the last surges of the
Wars of the Roses. Having become disabled and infirm, he had taken
advantage of a corrody, or right of maintenance, as being of kin to a
benefactor of Hyde Abbey at Winchester, to which Birkenholt some
generations back had presented a few roods of land, in right of which,
one descendant at a time might be maintained in the Abbey. Intelligence
of his brother's death had been sent to Richard Birkenholt, but answer
had been returned that he was too evil-disposed with the gout to attend
the burial.
The other uncle, Harry Randall, had disappeared from the country under a
cloud connected with the king's deer, leaving behind him the reputation
of a careless, thriftless, jovial fellow, the best company in all the
Forest, and capable of doing every one a work save his own.
The two brothers, who were about seven and six years old at the time of
his flight, had a lively recollection of his charms as a playmate, and
of their mother's grief for him, and refusal to believe any ill of her
Hal. Rumours had come of his attainment to vague and unknown greatness
at court, under the patronage of the Lord Archbishop of York, which the
Verdurer laughed to scorn, though his wife gave credit to them. Gifts
had come from time to time, passed through a succession of servants and
officials of the king, such as a coral and silver rosary, a jewelled
bodkin, an agate carved with Saint Catherine, an ivory pouncet box with
a pierced gold coin as the lid; but no letter with them, as indeed Hal
Randall had never been induced to learn to read or write. Master
Birkenholt looked doubtfully at the tokens and hoped Hal had come
honestly by them; but his wife had thoroughly imbued her sons with the
belief that Uncle Hal was shining in his proper sphere, where he was
better appreciated than at home. Thus their one plan was to go to
London to find Uncle Hal, who was sure to put Stephen on the road to
fortune, and enable Ambrose to become a great scholar, his favourite
ambition.
His gifts would, as Ambrose observed, serve them as tokens, and with the
purpose of claiming them, they re-entered the hall, a long low room,
with a handsome open roof, and walls tapestried with dressed skins,
interspersed with antlers, hung with weapons of the chase. At one end
of the hall was a small polished barrel, always replenished with beer,
at the other a hearth with a wood fire constantly burning, and there was
a table running the whole length of the room; at one end of this was
laid a cloth, with a few trenchers on it, and horn cups, surrounding a
barley loaf and a cheese, this meagre irregular supper being considered
as a sufficient supplement to the funeral baked meats which had abounded
at Beaulieu. John Birkenholt sat at the table with a trencher and horn
before him, uneasily using his knife to crumble, rather than cut, his
bread. His wife, a thin, pale, shrewish-looking woman, was warming her
child's feet at the fire, before putting him to bed, and an old woman
sat spinning and nodding on a settle at a little distance.
"Brother," said Stephen, "we have thought on what you said. We will put
our stuff together, and if you will count us out our portions, we will
be afoot by sunrise to-morrow."
"Nay, nay, lad, I said not there was such haste; did I, mistress
housewife?"--(she snorted); "only that thou art a well-grown lusty
fellow, and 'tis time thou wentest forth. For thee, Ambrose, thou
wottest I made thee a fair offer of bed and board."
"That is," called out the wife, "if thou wilt make a fair scholar of
little Will. 'Tis a mighty good offer. There are not many who would
let their child be taught by a mere stripling like thee!"
"Nay," said Ambrose, who could not bring himself to thank her, "I go
with Stephen, mistress; I would in end my scholarship ere I teach."
"As you please," said Mistress Maud, shrugging her shoulders, "only
never say that a fair offer was not made to you."
"And," said Stephen, "so please you, brother John, hand us over our
portions, and the jewels as bequeathed to us, and we will be gone."
"Portions, quotha?" returned John. "Boy, they be not due to you till
you be come to years of discretion."
The brothers looked at one another, and Stephen said, "Nay, now,
brother, I know not how that may be, but I do know that you cannot drive
us from our father's house without maintenance, and detain what belongs
to us."