"For him was leifer to have at his bedde's hedde
Twenty books clothed in blacke or redde
Of Aristotle and his philosophie
Than robes riche or fiddle or psalterie."
Chaucer.
Master Headley was found spending the summer evening in the bay window
of the hall. Tibble sat on a three-legged stool by him, writing in a
crabbed hand, in a big ledger, and Kit Smallbones towered above both,
holding in his hand a bundle of tally-sticks. By the help of these, and
of that accuracy of memory which writing has destroyed, he was
unfolding, down to the very last farthing, the entire account of
payments and receipts during his master's absence, the debtor and
creditor account being preserved as perfectly as if he had always had a
pen in his huge fingers, and studied book-keeping by double or single
entry.
On the return of the two boys with such an apparently respectable member
of society as the handsome well-dressed personage who accompanied them,
little Dennet, who had been set to sew her sampler on a stool by her
grandmother, under penalty of being sent off to bed if she disturbed her
father, sprang up with a little cry of gladness, and running up to
Ambrose, entreated for the tales of his good greenwood Forest, and the
pucks and pixies, and the girl who daily shared her breakfast with a
snake and said, "Eat your own side, Speckleback." Somehow, on Sunday
night she had gathered that Ambrose had a store of such tales, and she
dragged him off to the gallery, there to revel in them, while his
brother remained with her father.
Though Master Stephen had begun by being high and mighty about
mechanical crafts, and thought it a great condescension to consent to be
bound apprentice, yet when once again in the Dragon court, it looked so
friendly and felt so much like a home that he found himself very anxious
that Master Headley should not say that he could take no more
apprentices at present, and that he should be satisfied with the terms
uncle Hal would propose. And oh! suppose Tibble should recognise
Quipsome Hal!
However, Tibble was at this moment entirely engrossed by the accounts,
and his master left him and his big companion to unravel them, while he
himself held speech with his guest at some distance--sending for a cup
of sack, wherewith to enliven the conversation.
He showed himself quite satisfied with what Randall chose to tell of
himself as a well known "housekeeper" close to the Temple, his wife a
"lavender" there, while he himself was attached to the suite of the
Archbishop of York. Here alone was there any approach to shuffling, for
Master Headley was left to suppose that Randall attended Wolsey in his
capacity of king's counsellor, and therefore, having a house of his own,
had not been found in the roll of the domestic retainers and servants.
He did not think of inquiring further, the more so as Randall was
perfectly candid as to his own inferiority of birth to the Birkenholt
family, and the circumstances under which he had left the Forest.
Master Headley professed to be quite willing to accept Stephen as an
apprentice, with or without a fee; but he agreed with Randall that it
would be much better not to expose him to having it cast in his teeth
that he was accepted out of charity; and Randall undertook to get a
letter so written and conveyed to John Birkenholt that he should not
dare to withhold the needful sum, in earnest of which Master Headley
would accept the two crowns that Stephen had in hand, as soon as the
indentures could be drawn out by one of the many scriveners who lived
about Saint Paul's.
This settled, Randall could stay no longer, but he called both nephews
into the court with him. "Ye can write a letter?" he said.
"Ay, sure, both of us; but Ambrose is the best scribe," said Stephen.
"One of you had best write then. Let that cur John know that I have my
Lord of York's ear, and there will be no fear but he will give it. I'll
find a safe hand among the clerks, when the judges ride to hold the
assize. Mayhap Ambrose might also write to the Father at Beaulieu. The
thing had best be bruited."
"I wished to do so," said Ambrose. "It irked me to have taken no leave
of the good Fathers."
Randall then took his leave, having little more than time to return to
York House, where the Archbishop might perchance come home wearied and
chafed from the King, and the jester might be missed if not there to put
him in good humour.
The curfew sounded, and though attention to its notes was not compulsory
by law, it was regarded as the break-up of the evening and the note of
recall in all well-ordered establishments. The apprentices and
journeymen came into the court, among them Giles Headley, who had been
taken out by one of the men to be provided with a working dress, much to
his disgust; the grandmother summoned little Dennet and carried her off
to bed. Stephen and Ambrose bade good-night, but Master Headley and his
two confidential men remained somewhat longer to wind up their accounts.
Doors were not, as a rule, locked within the court, for though it
contained from forty to fifty persons, they were all regarded as a
single family, and it was enough to fasten the heavily bolted, iron-
studded folding doors of the great gateway leading into Cheapside, the
key being brought to the master like that of a castle, seven minutes,
measured by the glass, after the last note of the curfew in the belfry
outside Saint Paul's.
The summer twilight, however, lasted long after this time of grace, and
when Tibble had completed his accountant's work, and Smallbones' deep
voiced "Good-night, comrade," had resounded over the court, he beheld a
figure rise up from the steps of the gallery, and Ambrose's voice said:
"May I speak to thee, Tibble? I need thy counsel."
"Come hither, sir," said the foreman, muttering to himself, "Methought
'twas working in him! The leaven! the leaven!"
Tibble led the way up one of the side stairs into the open gallery,
where he presently opened a door, admitting to a small, though high
chamber, the walls of bare brick, and containing a low bed, a small
table, a three-legged stool, a big chest, and two cupboards, also a
cross over the head of the bed. A private room was a luxury neither
possessed nor desired by most persons of any degree, and only enjoyed by
Tibble in consideration of his great value to his master, his peculiar
tastes, and the injuries he had received. In point of fact, his fall
had been owing to a hasty blow, given in a passion by the master himself
when a young man. Dismay and repentance had made Giles Headley a cooler
and more self-controlled man ever since, and even if Tibble had not been
a superior workman, he might still have been free to do almost anything
he chose. Tibble gave his visitor the stool, and himself sat down on
the chest, saying: "So you have found your uncle, sir."
"Ay," said Ambrose, pausing in some expectation that Tibble would
mention some suspicion of his identity; but if the foreman had his ideas
on the subject he did not disclose them, and waited for more
communications.
"Tibble!" said Ambrose, with a long gasp, "I must find means to hear
more of him thou tookedst me to on Sunday."
"None ever truly tasted of that well without longing to come back to
it," quoth Tibble. "But hath not thy kinsman done aught for thee?"
"Nay," said Ambrose, "save to offer me a lodging with his wife, a good
and kindly lavender at the Temple."
Tibble nodded.
"So far am I free," said Ambrose, "and I am glad of it. I have a letter
here to one of the canons, one Master Alworthy, but ere I seek him I
would know somewhat from thee, Tibble. What like is he?"
"I cannot tell, sir," said Tibble. "The canons are rich and many, and a
poor smith like me wots little of their fashions."
"Is it true," again asked Ambrose, "that the Dean--he who spake those
words yesterday--hath a school here for young boys?"
"Ay. And a good and mild school it be, bringing them up in the name and
nurture of the Holy Child Jesus, to whom it is dedicated."
"Then they are taught this same doctrine?"
"I trow they be. They say the Dean loves them like the children of his
old age, and declares that they shall be made in love with holy lore by
gentleness rather than severity."
"Is it likely that this same Alworthy could obtain me entrance there?"
"Alack, sir, I fear me thou art too old. I see none but little lads
among them. Didst thou come to London with that intent?"
"Nay, for I only wist to-day that there was such a school. I came with
I scarce know what purpose, save to see Stephen safely bestowed, and
then to find some way of learning myself. Moreover, a change seems to
have come on me, as though I had hitherto been walking in a dream."
Tibble nodded, and Ambrose, sitting there in the dark, was moved to pour
forth all his heart, the experience of many an ardent soul in those
spirit searching days. Growing up happily under the care of the simple
monks of Beaulieu he had never looked beyond their somewhat mechanical
routine, accepted everything implicitly, and gone on acquiring knowledge
with the receptive spirit but dormant thought of studious boyhood as yet
unawakened, thinking that the studious clerical life to which every one
destined him would only be a continuation of the same, as indeed it had
been to his master, Father Simon. Not that Ambrose expressed this,
beyond saying, "They are good and holy men, and I thought all were like
them, and fear that was all!"
Then came death, for the first time nearly touching and affecting the
youth, and making his soul yearn after further depths, which he might
yet have found in the peace of the good old men, and the holy rites and
doctrine that they preserved; but before there was time for these things
to find their way into the wounds of his spirit, his expulsion from home
had sent him forth to see another side of monkish and clerkly life.
Father Shoveller, kindly as he was, was a mere yeoman with nothing
spiritual about him; the monks of Hyde were, the younger, gay comrades,
only trying how loosely they could sit to their vows; the elder,
churlish and avaricious; even the Warden of Elizabeth College was little
more than a student. And in London, fresh phases had revealed
themselves; the pomp, state, splendour and luxury of Archbishop Wolsey's
house had been a shock to the lad's ideal of a bishop drawn from the
saintly biographies he had studied at Beaulieu; and he had but to keep
his ears open to hear endless scandals about the mass-priests, as they
were called, since they were at this time very unpopular in London, and
in many cases deservedly so. Everything that the boy had hitherto
thought the way of holiness and salvation seemed invaded by evil and
danger, and under the bondage of death, whose terrible dance continued
to haunt him.
"I saw it, I saw it," he said, "all over those halls at York House. I
seemed to behold the grisly shape standing behind one and another, as
they ate and laughed; and when the Archbishop and his priests and the
King came in it seemed only to make the pageant complete! Only now and
then could I recall those blessed words, `Ye are free indeed.' Did he
say from the bondage of death?"
"Yea," said Tibble, "into the glorious freedom of God's children."
"Thou knowst it. Thou knowst it, Tibble. It seems to me that life is
no life, but living death, without that freedom! And I _must_ hear of
it, and know whether it is mine, yea, and Stephen's, and all whom I
love. O Tibble, I would beg my bread rather than not have that freedom
ever before mine eyes."
"Hold it fast! hold it fast, dear sir," said Tibble, holding out his
hands with tears in his eyes, and his face working in a manner that
happily Ambrose could not see.
"But how--how? The barefoot friar said that for an _Ave_ a day, our
Blessed Lady will drag us back from purgatory. I saw her on the wall of
her chapel at Winchester saving a robber knight from the sea, yea and a
thief from the gallows; but that is not being free."
"Fond inventions of pardon-mongers," muttered Tibble.
"And is one not free when the priest hath assoilsied him?" added
Ambrose.
"If, and if--" said Tibble. "But none shall make me trow that shrift in
words, without heart--sorrow for sin, and the Latin heard with no
thought of Him that bore the guilt, can set the sinner free. 'Tis none
other that the Dean sets forth, ay, and the book that I have here. I
thank my God," he stood up and took off his cap reverently, "that He
hath opened the eyes of another!"
His tone was such that Ambrose could have believed him some devout
almost inspired hermit rather than the acute skilful artisan he appeared
at other times; and in fact, Tibble Steelman, like many another
craftsman of those days, led a double life, the outer one that of the
ordinary workman, the inner one devoted to those lights that were
shining unveiled and new to in any; and especially here in the heart of
the City, partly from the influence of Dean Colet's sermons and
catechisings at Saint Paul's, but also from remnants of Lollardism,
which had never been entirely quenched. The ordinary clergy looked at
it with horror, but the intelligent and thoughtful of the burgher and
craftsman classes studied it with a passionate fervour which might have
sooner broken out and in more perilous forms save for the guidance it
received in the truly Catholic and open-spirited public teachings of
Colet, in which he persisted in spite of the opposition of his brother
clergy.
Not that as yet the inquirers had in the slightest degree broken with
the system of the Church, or with her old traditions. They were only
beginning to see the light that had been veiled from them, and to
endeavour to clear the fountain from the mire that had fouled it; and
there was as yet no reason to believe that the aspersions continually
made against the mass-priests and the friars were more than the chronic
grumblings of Englishmen, who had found the same faults in them for the
last two hundred years.
"And what wouldst thou do, young sir?" presently inquired Tibble.
"That I came to ask thee, good Tibble. I would work to the best of my
power in any craft so I may hear those words and gain the key to all I
have hitherto learnt, unheeding as one in a dream. My purpose had been
to be a scholar and a clerk, but I must see mine own way, and know
whither I am being carried, ere I can go farther."
Tibble writhed and wriggled himself about in consideration. "I would I
wist how to take thee to the Dean himself," he said, "but I am but a
poor man, and his doctrine is `new wine in old bottles' to the master,
though he be a right good man after his lights. See now, Master
Ambrose, me seemeth that thou hadst best take thy letter first to this
same priest. It may be that he can prefer thee to some post about the
minster. Canst sing?"
"I could once, but my voice is nought at this present. If I could but
be a servitor at Saint Paul's School!"
"It might be that the will which hath led thee so far hath that post in
store for thee, so bear the letter to Master Alworthy. And if he fail
thee, wouldst thou think scorn of aiding a friend of mine who worketh a
printing-press in Warwick Inner Ward? Thou wilt find him at his place
in Paternoster Row, hard by Saint Paul's. He needeth one who is clerk
enough to read the Latin, and the craft being a new one 'tis fenced by
none of those prentice laws that would bar the way to thee elsewhere, at
thy years."
"I should dwell among books!"
"Yea, and holy books, that bear on the one matter dear to the true
heart. Thou might serve Lucas Hansen at the sign of the Winged Staff
till thou hast settled thine heart, and then it may be the way would be
opened to study at Oxford or at Cambridge, so that thou couldst expound
the faith to others."
"Good Tibble, kind Tibble, I knew thou couldst aid me! Wilt thou speak
to this Master Hansen for me?"
Tibble, however, held that it was more seemly that Ambrose should first
try his fate with Master Alworthy, but in case of this not succeeding,
he promised to write a billet that would secure attention from Lucas
Hansen.
"I warn thee, however, that he is Low Dutch," he added, "though he
speaketh English well." He would gladly have gone with the youth, and
at any other time might have been sent by his master, but the whole
energies of the Dragon would be taken up for the next week by
preparations for the tilting-match at court, and Tibble could not be
spared for another working hour.
Ambrose, as he rose to bid his friend good-night, could not help saying
that he marvelled that one such as he could turn his mind to such
vanities as the tilt-yard required.
"Nay," said Tibble, "'twas the craft I was bred to--yea, and I have a
good master; and the Apostle Paul himself--as I've heard a preacher
say--bade men continue in the state wherein they were, and not be
curious to chop and change. Who knoweth whether in God's sight, all our
wars and policies be no more than the games of the tilt-yard. Moreover,
Paul himself made these very weapons read as good a sermon as the Dean
himself. Didst never hear of the shield of faith, and helmet of
salvation, and breastplate of righteousness? So, if thou comest to
Master Hansen, and provest worthy of his trust, thou wilt hear more, ay,
and maybe read too thyself, and send forth the good seed to others," he
murmured to himself, as he guided his visitor across the moonlit court
up the stairs to the chamber where Stephen lay fast asleep.