HOW THE OLD SCHOLAR AND I CAME TO LONDON
I leave you to imagine whether Sir Matthew made much or little of our
adventure in the marshes, and of the part he took therein, when, having
parted from us, he found himself free to relate the same privately to
his family; they having preceded him (without any escort at all) to his
new great mansion in Devizes. Upon our part, we, that is Mr. Jordan
and I, having inquired out the Inn to which my chattels had been
already carried, took up our lodging there for the night, being pretty
well fatigued (and I wounded too) so that of all things we desired
rest. Nevertheless my old schoolmaster would by no means suffer me to
go to bed until he had procured me a surgeon, who bound up my thigh and
took his fee without any word good or bad; afterwards going himself
into the kitchen (I mean Mr. Jordan did) in order to my more careful
attendance, so that the host his daughter brought me up of her best,
and called me poor child, though I was older than she by half a year.
Now, I learned next morning that Mr. Jordan at his supper had put so
heroical a construction upon our exploit as transformed us into men
above nature almost, and I loathed to descend into the common room
where all the ostlers and maids would be gaping after us for a pair of
paladins. Mr. Jordan took the prospect of such adulation very coolly,
saying that the wise man was he that nothing moved; but for all that I
saw he liked it, and indeed he had been at considerable pains to
prepare the ovation he now affected to despise. However, it so fell
out that when at length we descended amongst the people of the Inn, our
arrival quite failed of applause, and that for the simplest, although a
tragical, reason.
For it appeared that when, on the yesternight, Sir Matthew, having
discharged his baggage-wain and bestowed his goods and valuable stuff
within the house, had gone to bed, it being then about midnight and all
quiet, comes there, lurking through the dark night, that villain
serving-man Day, whose late defeat had nothing distracted him from his
hopes of plunder. With his poniard he cuts out a panel of the postern
door, and privily entering thereby, goes rummaging through the house
from loft to cellar, cutting and wasting what he could not carry off,
but for the money, of which he found good store, and sundry gold
ornaments thereto that were my lady Juke's, he fills his doublet full
of them, as is proved upon him, said the teller, beyond dispute.
"But then," proceeded the man, who now held our whole company
expectant, "even as he was about to steal away by the way he had come,
he heard a little grating noise, as of a weapon which one struck
against some impediment, close beside him in the dark where he was; and
supposing this to be the knight who had unluckily heard him, he drew
boldly upon him with his sword. The other thrust out upon the instant,
and a horrid conflict ensued, the men coming to grips shortly and
stabbing out of all rule. At length the serving-man, whose name is
Day, dealt his adversary his death-blow and prepared to flee away with
his booty, when it appeared (and as Day himself told me it surprised
him out of measure) his legs would not bear him; so that he fell along
the floor from sheer loss and effusion of blood, a subtle blow having
pierced him unawares and mortally hurt him. Thus they lay both until
the morning, when the servants, and I that am the butler, found them
there, the one of them already stark and the other close upon his end
and all aghast."
"Then thy master be murdered, Roger Butler," cried an old fellow from
the tail of the press.
"Not so, Father Time," shouted the butler with a great laugh, "although
Day, by that same error, was led into striking down one he should have
gone in leash withal, namely his fellow-thief, one Warren, that was
gone about the same game as himself."
"Why, 'tis the very knave that dealt Mr. Cleeve here that great wound I
told you of," cried Mr. Jordan, when the clamour of voices had somewhat
lessened; the which speech of his I could have wished not spoken, for
now all turned about, demanding this and that of me, and swearing I was
a brave lad; with such a deal of no-matter as put me into an extremity
of rage and shame, so that I was glad to escape away to the hall, where
I fell to at the ordinary, and drank to their confusion.
But for all my spleen it was indeed a merry tale, beside that it was a
marvellous judgment upon two rogues. Day, it seemed, had breath enough
left in him properly to incriminate Warren, who was, as I say, already
dead, and then rolled over and died too. There was an inquest held of
necessity, as well upon the thieves as upon poor Jenning that Day
killed before; which process somewhat detained us; but in the afternoon
of the day following, having satisfied the Coroner, we were permitted
to depart on our way.
Nevertheless there was a deal of time lost upon our reckoning, it being
now Saturday morning, and although we were now no further to be
hindered with the slowness of Juke's waggon, yet there was still a good
four score miles to go, and the Sunday falling on the morrow when we
were bound to rest, we could by no means reach London before Monday at
night, or even the Tuesday forenoon. My baggage I had sent on by the
common carrier, who engaged to transmit it at Reading, whither he
plied, to another carrier going to London.
We rode out of the base court of the Inn gaily enough, and soon came
upon the high Wiltshire downs, which, there having been a deal of snow
fallen in the night, lay about us in that infinite solemnity of
whiteness that stills a man's heart suddenly, as few things else have
the power to do.
Nought could we discern before and around us but ridge after ridge of
snow, above which hung a sky of unchanging grey; all features of the
country were quite obliterated, and but that some cart had gone that
way a while since, of which we picked out and followed the wheel marks
scrupulously, it had wanted little but we should have ridden bewildered
into some deep drift and perhaps perished. Indeed, we were fortunate
in that; and keeping close upon the track, although but slow going, in
time descended into the market town of Marlborough, which we reached
early in the afternoon. Here we refreshed ourselves and our beasts,
and then away into the Savernake forest, traversing it without mishap,
and so out upon the high road again by Hungerford, and into Newbury a
little after nightfall; having covered above thirty miles in all, the
ways bad too, and the day, because of the late season, very short.
On the Sunday we remained all day in the Inn, except that I went in the
morning to the Church there, when I heard a sermon by the curate upon
Wars and the Rumours thereof, wherein he advised us very earnestly to
examine our pieces and have them ready to hand and not to keep our
powder in the loft under the leaky thatch. He brought in somewhat,
too, about the Sword of the Spirit and the Shield of Faith, but
listlessly, and I saw that no one attended much to that, all men being
full of fear of the Papists, to which they were particularly moved by
Mr. Will. Parry's malicious behaviour in the House of Commons. The
scholar did not accompany me to the Church, I suppose because he was
himself a Papist, though perhaps no very rigorous one, but feigned a
stiffness from riding; and when I returned I found him in the larder,
where he was discoursing amply of the Scythians and their method of
extracting a fermented liquor from the milk of mares, which was of a
grateful potency, but (he lamented) not now to be obtained.
I wrote home a letter to my father after dinner, and in the evening
entertained the curate, who had got to hear of our going to London, and
came to speak with us thereon. He was an honest man, and of an
ingenuous complacency, which he manifested in telling us very quietly
that his Grace of Canterbury was of the same university as he, and he
doubted not, would be pleased to hear of him, and that he had taken
another rood of ground into the churchyard; all which I promised, if I
should meet his lordship, to relate.
We departed as was our custom, betimes on the morrow, travelling
towards Reading, and thereafter to Windsor, where we beheld with
admiration the great Castle of her Majesty's that is there; howbeit we
went not into the place, but left it on our right hand, and proceeded
still forward. But the night falling soon afterwards, we were fain to
put up in the little hamlet of Brentford upon the river Thames, whither
we learned that 'twas fortunate we had without accident arrived, a
certain haberdasher of repute having been robbed of all he carried upon
the heath we had but lately rid over into that place, and left for dead
by the wayside.
Perhaps it was this outrage which had made for our safety, and that,
being so far satisfied with the spoil of silks and rich stuff taken,
the malefactors had hastened to dispose of it to some that make a
living by that cowardly means, and are mostly dwellers about the Stocks
market, in the narrow lanes thereby, although some (as Culver Alley)
have been stopped up against such notorious use of thieves.
Notwithstanding, I here affirm, that in the morning, when we saw the
monstrous charges our lodging stood us in, we found we had not far to
seek for a thief as big as any; and having paid the innkeeper, told him
so.
But now we were come almost within view of the great City of which I
had so many times dreamed, and so beyond limits had advanced its
imagined glory, until it seemed to draw into itself all that was noble
and rich and powerful in the world; being Rome and Carthage too, I
thought, and the Indies added! nay, and only not Paris or Florence,
because it scorned the comparison. In such an exaltation I sat my
horse, looking to right and left as we rode through the lanes past
Hammersmith and Kensington, all the way being still deep in snow;
although hardened here by the traffic of country carts, or rather (I
said) by great equipages of the Court and the Queen's troops. Mr.
Jordan spoke twice or thrice upon indifferent matters, and chiefly, I
remember, of Olympus; but I regarded him contemptuously, having come
into a place where Olympus would be very cheaply esteemed as a hill, we
having our own Ludgate Hill, which, if not so high, is in all other
respects as good or better. But when he told me that we must soon each
take our leave of the other, all that vain mood left me, and I wished
him from my heart a thousand benefits and safety in his enterprise, in
which I would have joined him willingly had I not been bound to this
business of my uncle. He told me he should go to Moorfields, where he
had heard there was frequent exercise of arms, and there learn how to
set about his enrolment.
About this time we came to Charing Cross, where no further speech was
possible between us; such strangeness we met with, and unused fashion
of things; and proceeding by way of the Strand, we noted an infinite
succession of sights, of which the least elsewhere would have staggered
me, but now giving place to others as marvellous, or more, they did but
increase my appetite for amazement, which they alternately satisfied
and renewed. Upon the clamour and the infinite throngs of the
townsfolk, I but briefly touch, for they transcend all description, as
do the palaces of the Savoy and Arundel House that we passed by; and
the Earl of Essex his mansion, and other the inns of the great nobles
which lie upon the right side of this famous street, and betwixt it and
the Thames. Somerset House, moreover, that is still building, we saw,
and artificers yet at work thereupon, which will be, I think, when
builded, the finest palace of all. At Temple Bar a man leaves the
liberty of the Duchy (as it is called) and enters within the liberty
(albeit yet without the walls) of the City of London, and here, a
little distance further on, I found Fetter Lane upon the left hand,
where my lodging was, and so (having first learned where I should have
word of him) sorrowfully parted with Mr. Jordan at the end of it, he
going still eastward towards Paul's, and I up the lane, that is
northward, to Mr. Malt's, where I was well received, and led to a clean
and pleasant chamber in the gable, which he told me was to be mine.