"O the oak, and the birch, and the bonny holly tree,
They flourish best at home in my own countree."
When the absence of the barbarous token of the execution was discovered,
suspicion instantly fell on the More family, and Margaret, her husband,
and her brother, were all imprisoned. The brave lady took all upon
herself, and gave no names of her associates in the deed, and as Henry
the Eighth still sometimes had better moods, all were soon released.
But that night had given Ambrose a terrible cough, so that Dennet kept
him in bed two days. Indeed he hardly cared to rise from it. His whole
nature, health, spirits, and mind, had been so cruelly strained, and he
was so listless, so weak, so incapable of rousing himself, or turning to
any fresh scheme of life, that Stephen decided on fulfilling a long-
cherished plan of visiting their native home and seeing their uncle, who
had, as he had contrived to send them word, settled down on a farm which
he had bought with Perronel's savings, near Romsey. Headley, who was
lingering till Aldonza could leave her mistress and decide on any plan,
undertook to attend to the business, and little Giles, to his great
delight, was to accompany them.
So the brothers went over the old ground. They slept in the hostel at
Dogmersfield where the Dragon mark and the badge of the Armourers'
Company had first appeared before them. They found the very tree where
the alderman had been tied, and beneath which Spring lay buried, while
little Giles gazed with ecstatic, almost religious veneration, and
Ambrose seemed to draw in new life with the fresh air of the heath, now
becoming rich with crimson bells. They visited Hyde Abbey, and the
well-clothed, well-mounted travellers received a better welcome than had
fallen to the lot of the hungry lads. They were shown the grave of old
Richard Birkenholt in the cloister, and Stephen left a sum to be
expended in masses for his behoof. They looked into Saint Elizabeth's
College, but the kind warden was dead, and a trembling old man who
looked at them through the wicket hoped they were not sent from the
Commissioners. For the visitation of the lesser religious houses was
going on, and Saint Elizabeth's was already doomed. Stephen inquired at
the White Hart for Father Shoveller, and heard that he had grown too old
to perform the office of a bailiff, and had retired to the parent abbey.
The brothers therefore renounced their first scheme of taking Silkstede
in their way, and made for Romsey. There, under the shadow of the
magnificent nunnery, they dined pleasantly by the waterside at the sign
of Bishop Blaise, patron of the woolcombers of the town, and halted long
enough to refresh Ambrose, who was equal to very little fatigue. It
amused Stephen to recollect how mighty a place he had once thought the
little town.
Did mine host know Master Randall? What Master Randall of Baddesley?
He should think so! Was not the good man or his good wife here every
market-day, with a pleasant word for every one! Men said he had had
some good office about the Court, as steward or the like--for he was
plainly conversant with great men, though he made no boast. If these
guests were kin of his, they were welcome for his sake.
So the brothers rode on amid the gorse and heather till they came to a
broad-spreading oak tree, sheltering a farmhouse built in frames of
heavy timber, filled up with bricks set in zigzag patterns, with a high-
pitched roof and tall chimneys. Barns and stacks were near it, and
fields reclaimed from the heath were waving with corn just tinged with
the gold of harvest. Three or four cows, of the tawny hue that looked
so home-like to the brothers, were being released from the stack-yard
after being milked, and conducted to their field by a tall, white-haired
man in a farmer's smock with a little child perched on his shoulder, who
gave a loud jubilant cry at the sight of the riders. Stephen, pushing
on, began the question whether Master Randall dwelt there, but it broke
off half way into a cry of recognition on either side, Harry's an
absolute shout. "The lads, the lads! Wife, wife! 'tis our own lads!"
And as Perronel, more buxom and rosy than London had ever made her, came
forth from her dairy, and there was a _melee_ of greetings, and Stephen
would have asked what homeless little one the pair had adopted, he was
cut short by an exulting laugh. "No more adopted than thy Giles there,
Stephen. 'Tis our own boy, Thomas Randall! Yea, and if he have come
late, he is the better loved, though I trow Perronel there will ever
look on Ambrose as her eldest son."
"And by my troth, he needs good country diet and air!" cried Perronel.
"Thou hast had none to take care of thee, Ambrose. They have let thee
pine and dwine over thy books. I must take thee in hand."
"'Tis what I brought him to thee for, good aunt," said Stephen, smiling.
Great was the interchange of news over the homely hearty meal. It was
plain that no one could be happier, or more prosperous in a humble way,
than the ex-jester and his wife; and if anything could restore Ambrose
it would surely be the homely plenty and motherly care he found there.
Stephen heard another tale of his half-brother. His wife had soon been
disgusted by the loneliness of the verdurer's lodge, and was always
finding excuses for going to Southampton, where she and her daughter had
both caught the plague, imported in some Eastern merchandise, and had
died. The only son had turned out wild and wicked, and had been killed
in a broil which he had provoked: and John, a broken-down man, with no
one to enjoy the wealth he had accumulated, had given up his office as
verdurer, and retired to an estate which he had purchased on the skirts
of the Forest.
Stephen rode thither to see him, and found him a dying man, tyrannised
over and neglected by his servants, and having often bitterly regretted
his hardness towards his young brothers. All that Stephen did for him
he received as tokens of pardon, and it was not possible to leave him
until, after a fortnight's watching, he died in his brother's arms. He
had made no will, and Ambrose thus inherited a property which made his
future maintenance no longer an anxiety to his brother.
He himself seemed to care very little for the matter. To be allowed to
rest under Perronel's care, to read his Erasmus' Testament, and attend
mass on Sundays at the little Norman church, seemed all that he wished.
Stephen tried to persuade him that he was young enough at thirty-five to
marry and begin life again on the fair woodland river-bordered estate
that was his portion, but he shook his head. "No, Stephen, my work is
over. I could only help my dear master, and that is at an end. Dean
Colet is gone, Sir Thomas is gone, what more have I to do here? Old
ties are broken, old bonds severed. Crime and corruption were protested
against in vain; and, now that judgment is beginning at the house of
God, I am thankful that I am not like to live to see it."
Perronel scolded and exhorted him, and told him he would be stronger
when the hot weather was over, but Ambrose only smiled, and Stephen saw
a change in him, even in this fortnight, which justified his
forebodings.
Stephen and his uncle found a trustworthy bailiff to manage the estate,
and Ambrose remained in the house where he could now be no burthen.
Stephen was obliged to leave him and take home young Giles, who had, he
found, become so completely a country lad, enjoying everything to the
utmost, that he already declared that he would much rather be a yeoman
and forester than an armourer, and that he did not want to be
apprenticed to that black forge.
This again made Ambrose smile with pleasure as he thought of the boy as
keeping up the name of Birkenholt in the Forest. The one wish he
expressed was that Stephen would send down Tibble Steelman to be with
him. For in truth they both felt that in London Tib might at any time
be laid hands on, and suffer at Smithfield for his opinions. The hope
of being a comfort to Ambrose was perhaps the only idea that could have
counterbalanced the sense that he ought not to fly from martyrdom; and
as it proved, the invitation came only just in time. Three days after
Tibble had been despatched by the Southampton carrier in charge of all
the comforts Dennet could put together, Bishop Stokesley's grim
"soumpnour" came to summon him to the Bishop's court, and there could be
little question that he would have courted the faggot and stake. But as
he was gone out of reach, no further inquiries were made after him.
Dennet had told her husband that she had been amazed to find how, in
spite of a very warm affection for her, her husband, and children, her
father hankered after the old name, and grieved that he could not fulfil
his old engagement to his cousin Robert. Giles Headley had managed the
business excellently during Stephen's absence, had shown himself very
capable, and gained good opinions from all. Rubbing about in the world
had been very good for him; and she verily believed that nothing would
make her father so happy as for them to offer to share the business with
Giles. She would on her part make Aldonza welcome, and had no fears of
not agreeing with her. Besides--if little Giles were indeed to be heir
to Testside was not the way made clear?
So thus it was. The alderman was very happy in the arrangement, and
Giles Headley had not forfeited his rights to be a freeman of London or
a member of the Armourers' Guild. He married Aldonza at Michaelmas, and
all went well and peacefully in the household. Dennet never quitted her
father while he lived; but Stephen struggled through winter roads and
floods, and reached Baddesley in time to watch his brother depart in
peace, his sorrow and indignation for his master healed by the sense of
his martyrdom, and his trust firm and joyful. "If this be, as it is,
dying of grief," said Hal Randall, "surely it is a blessed way to die!"
A few winters later Stephen and Dennet left Giles Headley in sole
possession of the Dragon, with their second son as an apprentice, while
they themselves took up the old forest life as Master and Mistress
Birkenholt of Testside, where they lived and died honoured and loved.