A CHAPTER OF FOOLS.
The same afternoon, as it happened, a little company of rustics, who
had just issued from the low hatch-door of the village inn, stood
for a moment under the sign of the Crown and Mitre, which swung
huskily creaking from the bough of an ancient thorn tree, then
passed on to the road, and took their way together.
'Hope you then,' said one of them, as continuing their previous
conversation, 'that we shall escape unhurt? It is a parlous
business. Not as one of us is afeard as I knows on. But the old
earl, he do have a most unregenerate temper, and you had better look
to't, my masters.'
'I tell thee, master Upstill, it's not the old earl as I'm afeard
on, but the young lord. For thou knows as well as ere a one it be
not without cause that men do call him a wizard, for a wizard he be,
and that of the worst sort.'
'We shall be out again afore sundown, shannot we?' said another.
'That I trust.'
'Up to the which hour the High Court of Parliament assembled will
have power to protect its own--eh, John Croning?'
'Nay, that I cannot tell. It be a parlous job, and for mine own
part, whether for the love I bear to the truth, or the hatred I
cherish toward the scarlet Antichrist, with her seven tails--'
'Tush, tush, John! Seven heads, man, and ten horns. Those are the
numbers master Flowerdew read.'
'Nay, I know not for your horns; but for the rest I say seven tails.
Did not honest master Flowerdew set forth unto us last meeting that
the scarlet woman sat upon seven hills--eh? Have with you there,
master Sycamore!'
'Well, for the sake of sound argument, I grant you. But we ha'got to
do with no heads nor no tails, neither--save and except as you may
say the sting is in the tail; and then, or I greatly mistake, it's
not seven times seven as will serve to count the stings, come of the
tails what may.'
'Very true,' said another; 'it be the stings and not the tails we
want news of. But think you his lordship will yield them up without
gainsaying to us the messengers of the High Parliament now
assembled?'
'For mine own part,' said John Croning, 'though I fear it come of
the old Adam yet left in me, I do count it a sorrowful thing that
the earl should be such a vile recusant. He never fails with a
friendly word, or it may be a jest--a foolish jest--but honest, for
any one gentle or simple he may meet. More than once has he boarded
me in that fashion. What do you think he said to me, now, one day as
I was a mowin' of the grass in the court, close by the white horse
that spout up the water high as a house from his nose-drills? Says
he to me--for he come down the grand staircase, and steps out and
spies me at the work with my old scythe, and come across to me, and
says he, "Why, Thomas," says he, not knowin' of my name, "Why,
Thomas," says he, "you look like old Time himself a mowing of us all
down," says he. "For sure, my lord," says I, "your lordship reads it
aright, for all flesh is grass, and all the glory of man is as the
flower of the field." He look humble at that, for, great man as he
be, his earthly tabernacle, though more than sizeable, is but a
frail one, and that he do know. And says he, "Where did you read
that, Thomas?" "I am not a larned man, please your lordship," says
I, "and I cannot honestly say I read it nowheres, but I heerd the
words from a book your lordship have had news of: they do call it
the Holy Bible. But they tell me that they of your lordship's
persuasion like it not." "You are very much mistaken there, Thomas,"
says he. "I read my Bible most days, only not the English Bible,
which is full of errors, but the Latin, which is all as God gave
it," says he. And thereby I had not where to answer withal.'
'I fear you proved a poor champion of the truth, master Croning.'
'Confess now, Cast-down Upstill, had he not both sun and wind of
me--standing, so to say, on his own hearth-stone? Had it not been
so, I could have called hard names with the best of you, though that
is by rights the gift of the preachers of the truth. See how the
good master Flowerdew excelleth therein, sprinkling them abroad from
the watering-pot of the gospel. Verily, when my mind is too feeble
to grasp his argument, my memory lays fast hold upon the hard names,
and while I hold by them, I have it all in a nutshell.'
Fortified occasionally by a pottle of ale, and keeping their spirits
constantly stirred by much talking, they had been all day occupied
in searching the Catholic houses of the neighbourhood for arms. What
authority they had for it never came to be clearly understood.
Plainly they believed themselves possessed of all that was needful,
or such men would never have dared it. As it was, they prosecuted it
with such a bold front, that not until they were gone did it occur
to some, who had yielded what arms they possessed, to question
whether they had done wisely in acknowledging such fellows as
parliamentary officials without demanding their warrant. Their day's
gleanings up to this point--of swords and pikes, guns and pistols,
they had left in charge of the host of the inn whence they had just
issued, and were now bent on crowning their day's triumph with a
supreme act of daring--the renown of which they enlarged in their
own imaginations, while undermining the courage needful for its
performance, by enhancing its terrors as they went.
At length two lofty hexagonal towers appeared, and the consciousness
that the final test of their resolution drew nigh took immediate
form in a fluttering at the heart, which, however, gave no outward
sign but that of silence; and indeed they were still too full of the
importance of unaccustomed authority to fear any contempt for it on
the part of others.
It happened that at this moment Raglan Castle was full of
merry-making upon occasion of the marriage of one of lady Herbert's
waiting-gentlewomen to an officer of the household; and in these
festivities the earl of Worcester and all his guests were taking a
part.
Among the numerous members of the household was one who, from being
a turnspit, had risen, chiefly in virtue of an immovably lugubrious
expression of countenance, to be the earl's fool. From this
peculiarity his fellow-servants had given him the nickname of The
Hangman; but the man himself had chosen the role of a puritan
parson, as affording the best ground-work for the display of a
humour suitable to the expression of countenance with which his
mother had endowed him. That mother was Goody Rees, concerning whom,
as already hinted, strange things were whispered. In the earlier
part of his career the fool had not unfrequently found his mother's
reputation a sufficient shelter from persecution; and indeed there
might have been reason to suppose that it was for her son's sake she
encouraged her own evil repute, a distinction involving considerable
risk, seeing the time had not yet arrived when the disbelief in such
powers was sufficiently advanced for the safety of those reported to
possess them. In her turn, however, she ran a risk somewhat less
than ordinary from the fact that her boy was a domestic in the
family of one whose eldest son, the heir to the earldom, lay under a
similar suspicion; for not a few of the household were far from
satisfied that lord Herbert's known occupations in the Yellow Tower
were not principally ostensible, and that he and his man had nothing
to do with the black art, or some other of the many regions of
occult science in which the ambition after unlawful power may
hopefully exercise itself.
Upon occasion of a family fete, merriment was in those days carried
further, on the part of both masters and servants, than in the
greatly altered relations and conditions of the present day would be
desirable, or, indeed, possible. In this instance, the fun broke out
in the arranging of a mock marriage between Thomas Rees, commonly
called Tom Fool, and a young girl who served under the cook. Half
the jest lay in the contrast between the long face of the
bridegroom, both congenitally and wilfully miserable, and that of
the bride, broad as a harvest moon, and rosy almost to purple. The
bridegroom never smiled, and spoke with his jaws rather than his
lips; while the bride seldom uttered a syllable without grinning
from ear to ear, and displaying a marvellous appointment of huge and
brilliant teeth. Entering solemnly into the joke, Tom expressed
himself willing to marry the girl, but represented, as an
insurmountable difficulty, that he had no clothes for the occasion.
Thereupon the earl, drawing from his pocket his bunch of keys,
directed him to go and take what he liked from his wardrobe. Now the
earl was a man of large circumference, and the fool as lank in
person as in countenance.
Tom took the keys and was some time gone, during which many
conjectures were hazarded as to the style in which he would choose
to appear. When he re-entered the great hall, where the company was
assembled, the roar of laughter which followed his appearance made
the glass of its great cupola ring again. For not merely was he
dressed in the earl's beaver hat and satin cloak, splendid with
plush and gold and silver lace, but he had indued a corresponding
suit of his clothes as well, even to his silk stockings, garters,
and roses, and with the help of many pillows and other such farcing,
so filled the garments which otherwise had hung upon him like a
shawl from a peg, and made of himself such a 'sweet creature of
bombast' that, with ludicrous unlikeness of countenance, he bore in
figure no distant resemblance to the earl himself.
Meantime lady Elizabeth had been busy with the scullery-maid, whom
she had attired in a splendid brocade of her grandmother's, with all
suitable belongings of ruff, high collar, and lace wings, such as
Queen Elizabeth is represented with in Oliver's portrait. Upon her
appearance, a few minutes after Tom's, the laughter broke out
afresh, in redoubled peals, and the merriment was at its height,
when the warder of one of the gates entered and whispered in his
master's ear the arrival of the bumpkins, and their mission
announced, he informed his lordship, with all the importance and
dignity they knew how to assume. The earl burst into a fresh laugh.
But presently it quavered a little and ceased, while over the
amusement still beaming on his countenance gathered a slight shade
of anxiety, for who could tell what tempest such a mere whirling of
straws might not forerun?
A few words of the warder's had reached Tom where he stood a little
aside, his solemn countenance radiating disapproval of the
tumultuous folly around him. He took three strides towards the earl.
'Wherein lieth the new jest?' he asked, with dignity.
'A set of country louts, my lord,' answered the earl, 'are at the
gate, affirming the right of search in this your lordship's house of
Raglan.'
'For what?'
'Arms, my lord.'
'And wherefore? On what ground?'
'On the ground that your lordship is a vile recusant--a papist, and
therefore a traitor, no doubt, although they use not the word,' said
the earl.
'I shall be round with them,' said Tom, embracing the assumed
proportions in front of him, and turning to the door.
Ere the earl had time to conceive his intent, he had hurried from
the hall, followed by fresh shouts of laughter. For he had forgotten
to stuff himself behind, and, when the company caught sight of his
back as he strode out, the tenuity of the foundation for such a
'huge hill of flesh' was absurd as Falstaff's ha'p'orth of bread to
the 'intolerable deal of sack.'
But the next moment the earl had caught the intended joke, and
although a trifle concerned about the affair, was of too
mirth-loving a nature to interfere with Tom's project, the result of
which would doubtless be highly satisfactory--at least to those not
primarily concerned. He instantly called for silence, and explained
to the assembly what he believed to be Tom Fool's intent, and as
there was nothing to be seen from the hall, the windows of which
were at a great height from the floor, and Tom's scheme would be
fatally imperilled by the visible presence of spectators, from some
at least of whom gravity of demeanour could not be expected, gave
hasty instructions to several of his sons and daughters to disperse
the company to upper windows having a view of one or the other
court, for no one could tell where the fool's humour might find its
principal arena. The next moment, in the plain dress of rough
brownish cloth, which he always wore except upon state occasions, he
followed the fool to the gate, where he found him talking through
the wicket-grating to the rustics, who, having passed drawbridge and
portcullises, of which neither the former had been raised nor the
latter lowered for many years, now stood on the other side of the
gate demanding admittance. In the parley, Tom Fool was imitating his
master's voice and every one of the peculiarities of his speech to
perfection, addressing them with extreme courtesy, as if he took
them for gentlemen of no ordinary consideration,--a point in his
conception of his part which he never forgot throughout the whole
business. To the dismay of his master he was even more than
admitting, almost boasting, that there was an enormous quantity of
weapons in the castle--sufficient at least to arm ten thousand
horsemen!--a prodigious statement, for, at the uttermost, there was
not more than the tenth part of that amount--still a somewhat larger
provision no doubt than the intruders had expected to find! The
pseudo-earl went on to say that the armoury consisted of one strong
room only, the door of which was so cunningly concealed and secured
that no one but himself knew where it was, or if found could open
it. But such he said was his respect to the will of the most august
parliament, that he would himself conduct them to the said armoury,
and deliver over upon the spot into their safe custody the whole
mass of weapons to carry away with them. And thereupon he proceeded
to open the gate.
By this time the door of the neighbouring guard-room was crowded
with the heads of eager listeners, but the presence of the earl kept
them quiet, and at a sign from him they drew back ere the men
entered. The earl himself took a position where he would be covered
by the opening wicket.
Tom received them into bodily presence with the notification that,
having suspected their object, he had sent all his people out of the
way, in order to avoid the least danger of a broil. Bowing to them
with the utmost politeness as they entered, he requested them to
step forward into the court while he closed the wicket behind them,
but took the opportunity of whispering to one of the men just inside
the door of the guardhouse, who, the moment Tom had led the rustics
away, approached the earl, and told him what he had said.
'What can the rascal mean?' said the earl to himself; but he told
the man to carry the fool's message exactly as he had received it,
and quietly followed Tom and his companions, some of whom,
conceiving fresh importance from the overstrained politeness with
which they had been received, were now attempting a transformation
of their usual loundering gait into a martial stride, with the
result of a foolish strut, very unlike the dignified progress of the
sham earl, whose weak back roused in them no suspicion, and who had
taken care they should not see his face. Across the paved court, and
through the hall to the inner court, Tom led them, and the earl
followed.
The twilight was falling. The hall was empty of life, and filled
with a sombre dusk, echoing to every step as they passed through it.
They did not see the flash of eyes and glimmer of smiles from the
minstrel's gallery, and the solitude, size, and gloom had, even on
their dull natures, a palpable influence. The whole castle seemed
deserted as they followed the false earl across the second
court--with the true one stealing after them like a knave--little
imagining that bright eyes were watching them from the curtains of
every window like stars from the clear spaces and cloudy edges of
heaven. To the north-west corner of the court he led them, and
through a sculptured doorway up the straight wide ascent of stone
called the grand staircase. At the top he turned to the right, along
a dim corridor, from which he entered a suite of bedrooms and
dressing-rooms, over whose black floors he led the trampling
hob-nailed shoes without pity either for their polish or the labour
of the housemaids in restoring it.
In this way he reached the stair in the bell-tower, ascending which
he brought them into a narrow dark passage ending again in a
downward stair, at the foot of which they found themselves in the
long picture-gallery, having entered it in the recess of one of its
large windows. At the other end of the gallery he crossed into the
dining-room, then through an ante-chamber entered the drawing-room,
where the ladies, apprised of their approach, kept still behind
curtains and high chairs, until they had passed through, on their
way to cross the archway of the main entrance, and through the
library gain the region of household economy and cookery. Thither I
will not drag my reader after them. Indeed the earl, who had been
dogging them like a Fate, ever emerging on their track but never
beheld, had already began to pay his part of the penalty of the joke
in fatigue, for he was not only unwieldy in person, but far from
robust, being very subject to gout. He owed his good spirits to a
noble nature, and not to animal well-being. When they crossed from
the picture-gallery to the dining-room, he went down the stair
between, and into the oak-parlour adjoining the great hall. There he
threw himself into an easy chair which always stood for him in the
great bay window, looking over the moat to the huge keep of the
castle, and commanding through its western light the stone bridge
which crossed it. There he lay back at his ease, and, instructed by
the message Tom had committed to the serjeant of the guard, waited
the result.
As for his double, he went stalking on in front of his victims,
never turning to show his face; he knew they would follow, were it
but for the fear of being left alone. Close behind him they kept,
scarce daring to whisper from growing awe of the vast place. The
fumes of the beer had by this time evaporated, and the heavy
obscurity which pervaded the whole building enhanced their growing
apprehensions. On and on the fool led them, up and down, going and
returning, but ever in new tracks, for the marvellous old place was
interminably burrowed with connecting passages and communications of
every sort--some of them the merest ducts which had to be all but
crept through, and which would have certainly arrested the progress
of the earl had he followed so far: no one about the place
understood its "crenkles" so well as Tom. For the greater part of an
hour he led them thus, until, having been on their legs the whole
day, they were thoroughly wearied as well as awe-struck. At length,
in a gloomy chamber, where one could not see the face of another,
the pseudo-earl turned full upon them, and said in his most solemn
tones:--
'Arrived thus far, my masters, it is borne in upon me with rebuke,
that before undertaking to guide you to the armoury, I should have
acquainted you with the strange fact that at times I am myself
unable to find the place of which we are in search; and I begin to
fear it is so now, and that we are at this moment the sport of a
certain member of my family of whom it may be your worships have
heard things not more strange than true. Against his machinations I
am powerless. All that is left us is to go to him and entreat him to
unsay his spells.'
A confused murmur of objections arose.
'Then your worships will remain here while I go to the Yellow Tower,
and come to you again?' said the mock earl, making as if he would
leave them.
But they crowded round him with earnest refusals to be abandoned;
for in their very souls they felt the fact that they were upon
enchanted ground--and in the dark.
'Then follow me,' he said, and conducted them into the open air of
the inner court, almost opposite the archway in its buildings
leading to the stone bridge, whose gothic structure bestrid the moat
of the keep.
For Raglan Castle had this peculiarity, that its keep was surrounded
by a moat of its own, separating it from the rest of the castle, so
that, save by bridge, no one within any more than without the walls
could reach it. On to the bridge Tom led the way, followed by his
dupes--now full in the view of the earl where he sat in his parlour
window. When they had reached the centre of it, however, and
glancing up at the awful bulk of stone towering above them, its
walls strangely dented and furrowed, so as to such as they, might
well suggest frightful means to wicked ends, they stood stock-still,
refusing to go a step further; while their chief speaker, Upstill,
emboldened by anger, fear, and the meek behaviour of the supposed
earl, broke out in a torrent of arrogance, wherein his intention was
to brandish the terrors of the High Parliament over the heads of his
lordship of Worcester and all recusants. He had not got far,
however, before a shrill whistle pierced the air, and the next
instant arose a chaos of horrible, appalling, and harrowing noises,
'such a roaring,' in the words of their own report of the matter to
the reverend master Flowerdew, 'as if the mouth of hell had been
wide open, and all the devils conjured up'--doubtless they meant by
the arts of the wizard whose dwelling was that same tower of fearful
fame before which they now stood. The skin-contracting chill of
terror uplifted their hair. The mystery that enveloped the origin of
the sounds gave them an unearthliness which froze the very fountains
of their life, and rendered them incapable even of motion. They
stared at each other with a ghastly observance, which descried no
comfort, only like images of horror. 'Man's hand is not able to
taste' how long they might have thus stood, nor 'his tongue to
conceive' what the consequences might have been, had not a more
healthy terror presently supervened. Across the tumult of sounds,
like a fiercer flash through the flames of a furnace, shot a
hideous, long-drawn yell, and the same instant came a man running at
full speed through the archway from the court, casting
terror-stricken glances behind him, and shouting with a voice
half-choked to a shriek--
'Look to yourselves, my masters; the lions are got loose!'
All the world knew that ever since King James had set the fashion by
taking so much pleasure in the lions at the Tower, strange beasts
had been kept in the castle of Raglan.
The new terror broke the spell of the old, and the parliamentary
commissioners fled. But which was the way from the castle? Which the
path to the lions' den? In an agony of horrible dread, they rushed
hither and thither about the court, where now the white horse, as
steady as marble, should be when first they crossed it, was, to
their excited vision, prancing wildly about the great basin from
whose charmed circle he could not break, foaming, at the mouth, and
casting huge water-jets from his nostrils into the perturbed air;
while from the surface of the moat a great column of water shot up
nearly as high as the citadel, whose return into the moat was like a
tempest, and with all the elemental tumult was mingled the howling
of wild beasts. The doors of the hall and the gates to the bowling
green being shut, the poor wretches could not find their way out of
the court, but ran from door to door like madmen, only to find all
closed against them. From every window around the court--from the
apartments of the waiting gentlewomen, from the picture-gallery,
from the officers' rooms, eager and merry eyes looked down on the
spot, themselves unseen and unsuspected, for all voices were hushed,
and for anything the bumpkins heard or saw they might have been in a
place deserted of men, and possessed only by evil spirits, whose
pranks were now tormenting them. At last Upstill, who had fallen on
the bridge at his first start, and had ever since been rushing about
with a limp and a leap alternated, managed to open the door of the
hall, and its eastern door having been left open, shot across and
into the outer court, where he made for the gate, followed at varied
distance by the rest of the routed commissioners of search, as each
had discovered the way his forerunner fled. With trembling hands
Upstill raised the latch of the wicket, and to his delight found it
unlocked. He darted through, passed the twin portcullises, and was
presently thundering over the draw-bridge, which, trembling under
his heavy steps, seemed on the point of rising to heave him back
into the jaws of the lion, or, worse still, the clutches of the
enchanter. Not one looked behind him, not even when, having passed
through the white stone gate, also purposely left open for their
escape, and rattled down the multitude of steps that told how deep
was the moat they had just crossed, where the last of them nearly
broke his neck by rolling almost from top to bottom, they reached
the outermost, the brick gate, and so left the awful region of
enchantment and feline fury commingled. Not until the castle was out
of sight, and their leader had sunk senseless on the turf by the
roadside, did they dare a backward look. The moment he came to
himself they started again for home, at what poor speed they could
make, and reached the Crown and Mitre in sad plight, where, however,
they found some compensation in the pleasure of setting forth their
adventures--with the heroic manner in which, although vanquished by
the irresistible force of enchantment, they had yet brought off
their forces without the loss of a single man. Their story spread
over the country, enlarged and embellished at every fresh stage in
its progress.
When the tale reached mother Rees, it filled her with fresh awe of
the great magician, the renowned lord Herbert. She little thought
the whole affair was a jest of her own son's. Firmly believing in
all kinds of magic and witchcraft, but as innocent of conscious
dealing with the powers of ill as the whitest-winged angel betwixt
earth's garret and heaven's threshold, she owed her evil repute
amongst her neighbours to a rare therapeutic faculty, accompanied by
a keen sympathetic instinct, which greatly sharpened her powers of
observation in the quest after what was amiss; while her touch was
so delicate, so informed with present mind, and came therefore into
such rapport with any living organism, the secret of whose suffering
it sought to discover, that sprained muscles, dislocated joints, and
broken bones seemed at its soft approach to re-arrange their
disturbed parts, and yield to the power of her composing will as to
a re-ordering harmony. Add to this, that she understood more of the
virtues of some herbs than any doctor in the parish, which, in the
condition of general practice at the time, is not perhaps to say
much, and that she firmly believed in the might of certain charms,
and occasionally used them--and I have given reason enough why,
while regarded by all with disapprobation--she should be by many
both courted and feared. For her own part she had a leaning to the
puritans, chiefly from respect to the memory of a good-hearted,
weak, but intellectually gifted, and, therefore, admired husband;
but the ridicule of her yet more gifted son had a good deal shaken
this predilection, so that she now spent what powers of
discrimination and choice she possessed solely upon persons,
heedless of principles in themselves, and regarding them only in
their vital results. Hence, it was a matter of absolute indifference
to her which of the parties now dividing the country was in the
right, or which should lose, which win, provided no personal evil
befel the men or women for whom she cherished a preference. Like
many another, she was hardly aware of the jurisdiction of
conscience, save in respect of immediate personal relations.