A SUNDAY IN THE CITY
“The rod of Heaven has touched them all,
The word from Heaven is spoken:
Rise, shine and sing, thou captive thrall,
Are not thy fetters broken?”
Keble.
On Sunday morning, when the young Birkenholts awoke, the whole air
seemed full of bells from hundreds of Church and Minster steeples. The
Dragon Court wore a holiday air, and there was no ring of hammers at
the forges; but the men who stood about were in holiday attire: and the
brothers assumed their best clothes.
Breakfast was not a meal much accounted of. It was reckoned effeminate
to require more than two meals a day, though, just as in the verdurer’s
lodge at home, there was a barrel of ale on tap with drinking horns
beside it in the hall, and on a small round table in the window a loaf
of bread, to which city luxury added a cheese, and a jug containing
sack, with some silver cups beside it, and a pitcher of fair water.
Master Headley, with his mother and daughter, was taking a morsel of
these refections, standing, and in out-door garments, when the brothers
appeared at about seven o’clock in the morning.
“Ha! that’s well,” quoth he, greeting them. “No slugabeds, I see. Will
ye come with us to hear mass at St. Faith’s?” They agreed, and Master
Headley then told them that if they would tarry till the next day in
searching out their uncle, they could have the company of Tibble
Steelman, who had to see one of the captains of the guard about an
alteration of his corslet, and thus would have every opportunity of
facilitating their inquiries for their uncle.
The mass was an ornate one, though not more so than they were
accustomed to at Beaulieu. Ambrose had his book of devotions, supplied
by the good monks who had brought him up, and old Mrs. Headley carried
something of the same kind; but these did not necessarily follow the
ritual, and neither quiet nor attention was regarded as requisite in
“hearing mass.” Dennet, unchecked, was exchanging flowers from her
Sunday posy with another little girl, and with hooded fingers carrying
on in all innocence the satirical pantomime of Father Francis and
Sister Catharine; and even Master Headley himself exchanged remarks
with his friends, and returned greetings from burgesses and their wives
while the celebrant priest’s voice droned on, and the choir
responded—the peals of the organ in the Minster above coming in at
inappropriate moments, for there they were in a different part of High
Mass using the Liturgy peculiar to St. Paul’s.
Thinking of last week at Beaulieu, Ambrose knelt meantime with his head
buried in his hands, in an absorption of feeling that was not perhaps
wholly devout, but which at any rate looked more like devotion than the
demeanour of any one around. When the _Ite missa est_ was pronounced,
and all rose up, Stephen touched him and he rose, looking about,
bewildered.
“So please you, young sir, I can show you another sort of thing by and
by,” said in his ear Tibble Steelman, who had come in late, and marked
his attitude.
They went up from St. Faith’s in a flood of talk, with all manner of
people welcoming Master Headley after his journey, and thence came back
to dinner which was set out in the hall very soon after their return
from church. Quite guests enough were there on this occasion to fill
all the chairs, and Master Headley intimated to Giles that he must
begin his duties at table as an apprentice, under the tuition of the
senior, a tall young fellow of nineteen, by name Edmund Burgess. He
looked greatly injured and discomfited, above all when he saw his two
travelling companions seated at the table—though far lower than the
night before; nor would he stir from where he was standing against the
wall to do the slightest service, although Edmund admonished him
sharply that unless he bestirred himself it would be the worse for him.
When the meal was over, and grace had been said, the boards were
removed from their trestles, and the elders drew round the small table
in the window with a flagon of sack and a plate of wastel bread in
their midst to continue their discussion of weighty Town Council
matters. Every one was free to make holiday, and Edmund Burgess
good-naturedly invited the strangers to come to Mile End, where there
was to be shooting at the butts, and a match at singlestick was to come
off between Kit Smallbones and another giant, who was regarded as the
champion of the brewer’s craft.
Stephen was nothing loth, especially if he might take his own crossbow;
but Ambrose never had much turn for these pastimes and was in no mood
for them. The familiar associations of the mass had brought the grief
of orphanhood, homelessness, and uncertainty upon him with the more
force. His spirit yearned after his father, and his heart was sick for
his forest home. Moreover, there was the duty incumbent on a good son
of saying his prayers for the repose of his father’s soul. He hinted as
much to Stephen, who, boy-like, answered, “Oh, we’ll see to that when
we get into my Lord of York’s house. Masses must be plenty there. And I
must see Smallbones floor the brewer.”
Ambrose could trust his brother under the care of Edmund Burgess, and
resolved on a double amount of repetitions of the appointed
intercessions for the departed.
He was watching the party of youths set off, all except Giles Headley,
who sulkily refused the invitations, betook himself to a window and sat
drumming on the glass, while Ambrose stood leaning on the dragon
balustrade, with his eyes dreamily following the merry lads out at the
gateway.
“You are not for such gear, sir,” said a voice at his ear, and he saw
the scathed face of Tibble Steelman beside him.
“Never greatly so, Tibble,” answered Ambrose. “And my heart is too
heavy for it now.”
“Ay, ay, sir. So I thought when I saw you in St. Faith’s. I have known
what it was to lose a good father in my time.”
Ambrose held out his hand. It was the first really sympathetic word he
had heard since he had left Nurse Joan.
“’Tis the week’s mind of his burial,” he said, half choked with tears.
“Where shall I find a quiet church where I may say his _De profundis_
in peace?”
“Mayhap,” returned Tibble, “the chapel in the Pardon churchyard would
serve your turn. ’Tis not greatly resorted to when mass time is over,
when there’s no funeral in hand, and I oft go there to read my book in
quiet on a Sunday afternoon. And then, if ’tis your will, I will take
you to what to my mind is the best healing for a sore heart.”
“Nurse Joan was wont to say the best for that was a sight of the true
Cross, as she once beheld it at Holy Rood church at Southampton,” said
Ambrose.
“And so it is, lad, so it is,” said Tibble, with a strange light on his
distorted features.
So they went forth together, while Giles again hugged himself in his
doleful conceit, marvelling how a youth of birth and nurture could walk
the streets on a Sunday with a scarecrow such as that!
The hour was still early, there was a whole summer afternoon before
them; and Tibble, seeing how much his young companion was struck with
the grand vista of church towers and spires, gave him their names as
they stood, though coupling them with short dry comments on the way in
which their priests too often perverted them.
The Cheap was then still in great part an open space, where boys were
playing, and a tumbler was attracting many spectators; while the
ballad-singer of yesterday had again a large audience, who laughed
loudly at every coarse jest broken upon mass-priests and friars.
Ambrose was horrified at the stave that met his ears, and asked how
such profanity could be allowed. Tibble shrugged his shoulders, and
cited the old saying, “The nearer the church”—adding, “Truth hath a
voice, and will out.”
“But surely this is not the truth?”
“’Tis mighty like it, sir, though it might be spoken in a more seemly
fashion.”
“What’s this?” demanded Ambrose. “’Tis a noble house.”
“That’s the Bishop’s palace, sir—a man that hath much to answer for.”
“Liveth he so ill a life then?”
“Not so. He is no scandalous liver, but he would fain stifle all the
voices that call for better things. Ay, you look back at yon
ballad-monger! Great folk despise the like of him, never guessing at
the power there may be in such ribald stuff; while they would fain
silence that which might turn men from their evil ways while yet there
is time.”
Tibble muttered this to himself, unheeded by Ambrose, and then
presently crossing the church-yard, where a grave was being filled up,
with numerous idle children around it, he conducted the youth into a
curious little chapel, empty now, but with the Host enthroned above the
altar, and the trestles on which the bier had rested still standing in
the narrow nave.
It was intensely still and cool, a fit place indeed for Ambrose’s
filial devotions, while Tibble settled himself on the step, took out a
little black book, and became absorbed. Ambrose’s Latin scholarship
enabled him to comprehend the language of the round of devotions he was
rehearsing for the benefit of his father’s soul; but there was much
repetition in them, and he had been so trained as to believe their
correct recital was much more important than attention to their spirit,
and thus, while his hands held his rosary, his eyes were fixed upon the
walls where was depicted the Dance of Death. In terrible repetition,
the artist had aimed at depicting every rank or class in life as alike
the prey of the grisly phantom. Triple-crowned pope, scarlet-hatted
cardinal, mitred prelate, priests, monks, and friars of every degree;
emperors, kings, princes, nobles, knights, squires, yeomen, every sort
of trade, soldiers of all kinds, beggars, even thieves and murderers,
and, in like manner, ladies of every degree, from the queen and the
abbess, down to the starving beggar, were each represented as grappled
with, and carried off by the crowned skeleton. There was no truckling
to greatness. The bishop and abbot writhed and struggled in the grasp
of Death, while the miser clutched at his gold, and if there were some
nuns, and some poor ploughmen who willingly clasped his bony fingers
and obeyed his summons joyfully, there were countesses and prioresses
who tried to beat him off, or implored him to wait. The infant smiled
in his arms, but the middle-aged fought against his scythe.
The contemplation had a most depressing effect on the boy, whose heart
was still sore for his father. After the sudden shock of such a loss,
the monotonous repetition of the snatching away of all alike, in the
midst of their characteristic worldly employments, and the anguish and
hopeless resistance of most of them, struck him to the heart. He moved
between each bead to a fresh group; staring at it with fixed gaze,
while his lips moved in the unconscious hope of something consoling;
till at last, hearing some uncontrollable sobs, Tibble Steelman rose
and found him crouching rather than kneeling before the figure of an
emaciated hermit, who was greeting the summons of the King of Terrors,
with crucifix pressed to his breast, rapt countenance and outstretched
arms, seeing only the Angel who hovered above. After some minutes of
bitter weeping, which choked his utterance, Ambrose, feeling a friendly
hand on his shoulder, exclaimed in a voice broken by sobs, “Oh, tell
me, where may I go to become an anchorite! There’s no other safety!
I’ll give all my portion, and spend all my time in prayer for my father
and the other poor souls in purgatory.”
Two centuries earlier, nay, even one, Ambrose would have been
encouraged to follow out his purpose. As it was, Tibble gave a little
dry cough and said, “Come along with me, sir, and I’ll show you another
sort of way.”
“I want no entertainment!” said Ambrose, “I should feel only as if he,”
pointing to the phantom, “were at hand, clutching me with his deadly
claw,” and he looked over his shoulder with a shudder.
There was a box by the door to receive alms for masses on behalf of the
souls in purgatory, and here he halted and felt for the pouch at his
girdle, to pour in all the contents; but Steelman said, “Hold, sir, are
you free to dispose of your brother’s share, you who are purse-bearer
for both?”
“I would fain hold my brother to the only path of safety.”
Again Tibble gave his dry cough, but added, “He is not in the path of
safety who bestows that which is not his own but is held in trust. I
were foully to blame if I let this grim portrayal so work on you as to
lead you to beggar not only yourself, but your brother, with no consent
of his.”
For Tibble was no impulsive Italian, but a sober-minded Englishman of
sturdy good sense, and Ambrose was reasonable enough to listen and only
drop in a few groats which he knew to be his own.
At the same moment, a church bell was heard, the tone of which Steelman
evidently distinguished from all the others, and he led the way out of
the Pardon churchyard, over the space in front of St. Paul’s. Many
persons were taking the same route; citizens in gowns and gold or
silver chains, their wives in tall pointed hats; craftsmen,
black-gowned scholarly men with fur caps, but there was a much more
scanty proportion of priests, monks or friars, than was usual in any
popular assemblage. Many of the better class of women carried folding
stools, or had them carried by their servants, as if they expected to
sit and wait.
“Is there a procession toward? or a relic to be displayed?” asked
Ambrose, trying to recollect whose feast-day it might be.
Tibble screwed up his mouth in an extraordinary smile as he said,
“Relic quotha? yea, the soothest relic there be of the Lord and Master
of us all.”
“Methought the true Cross was always displayed on the High Altar,” said
Ambrose, as all turned to a side aisle of the noble nave.
“Rather say hidden,” muttered Tibble. “Thou shalt have it displayed,
young sir, but neither in wood nor gilded shrine. See, here he comes
who setteth it forth.”
From the choir came, attended by half a dozen clergy, a small, pale
man, in the ordinary dress of a priest, with a square cap on his head.
He looked spare, sickly, and wrinkled, but the furrows traced lines of
sweetness, his mouth was wonderfully gentle, and there was a keen
brightness about his clear grey eye. Every one rose and made obeisance
as he passed along to the stone stair leading to a pulpit projecting
from one of the columns.
Ambrose saw what was coming, though he had only twice before heard
preaching. The children of the ante-reformation were not called upon to
hear sermons; and the few exhortations given in Lent to the monks of
Beaulieu were so exclusively for the religious that seculars were not
invited to them. So that Ambrose had only once heard a weary and heavy
discourse there plentifully garnished with Latin; and once he had stood
among the throng at a wake at Millbrook, and heard a begging friar
recommend the purchase of briefs of indulgence and the daily repetition
of the Ave Maria by a series of extraordinary miracles for the rescue
of desperate sinners, related so jocosely as to keep the crowd in a
roar of laughter. He had laughed with the rest, but he could not
imagine his guide, with the stern, grave eyebrows, writhen features and
earnest, ironical tone, covering—as even he could detect—the deepest
feeling, enjoying such broad sallies as tickled the slow merriment of
village clowns and forest deer-stealers.
All stood for a moment while the Paternoster was repeated. Then the
owners of stools sat down on them, some leant on adjacent pillars,
others curled themselves on the floor, but most remained on their feet
as unwilling to miss a word, and of these were Tibble Steelman and his
companion.
_Omnis qui facit peccatum_, _servus est peccati_, followed by the
rendering in English, “Whosoever doeth sin is sin’s bond thrall.” The
words answered well to the ghastly delineations that seemed stamped on
Ambrose’s brain and which followed him about into the nave, so that he
felt himself in the grasp of the cruel fiend, and almost expected to
feel the skeleton claw of Death about to hand him over to torment. He
expected the consolation of hearing that a daily “Hail Mary,”
persevered in through the foulest life, would obtain that beams should
be arrested in their fall, ships fail to sink, cords to hang, till such
confession had been made as should insure ultimate salvation, after
such a proportion of the flames of purgatory as masses and prayers
might not mitigate.
But his attention was soon caught. Sinfulness stood before him not as
the liability to penalty for transgressing an arbitrary rule, but as a
taint to the entire being, mastering the will, perverting the senses,
forging fetters out of habit, so as to be a loathsome horror paralysing
and enchaining the whole being and making it into the likeness of him
who brought sin and death into the world. The horror seemed to grow on
Ambrose, as his boyish faults and errors rushed on his mind, and he
felt pervaded by the contagion of the pestilence, abhorrent even to
himself. But behold, what was he hearing now? “The bond thrall abideth
not in the house for ever, but the Son abideth ever. _Si ergo Filius
liberavit, verè liberi eritis_.” “If the Son should make you free, then
are ye free indeed.” And for the first time was the true liberty of the
redeemed soul comprehensibly proclaimed to the young spirit that had
begun to yearn for something beyond the outside. Light began to shine
through the outward ordinances; the Church; the world, life, and death,
were revealed as something absolutely new; a redeeming, cleansing,
sanctifying power was made known, and seemed to inspire him with a new
life, joy, and hope. He was no longer feeling himself necessarily
crushed by the fetters of death, or only delivered from absolute peril
by a mechanism that had lost its heart, but he could enter into the
glorious liberty of the sons of God, in process of being saved, not in
sin but _from_ sin.
It was an era in his life, and Tibble heard him sobbing, but with very
different sobs from those in the Pardon chapel. When it was over, and
the blessing given, Ambrose looked up from the hands which had covered
his face with a new radiance in his eyes, and drew a long breath.
Tibble saw that he was like one in another world, and gently led him
away.
“Who is he? What is he? Is he an angel from Heaven?” demanded the boy,
a little wildly, as they neared the southern door.
“If an angel be a messenger of God, I trow he is one,” said Tibble.
“But men call him Dr. Colet. He is Dean of St. Paul’s Minster, and
dwelleth in the house you see below there.”
“And are such words as these to be heard every Sunday?”
“On most Sundays doth he preach here in the nave to all sorts of folk.”
“I must—I must hear it again!” exclaimed Ambrose.
“Ay, ay,” said Tibble, regarding him with a well-pleased face. “You are
one with whom it works.”
“Every Sunday!” repeated Ambrose. “Why do not all—your master and all
these,” pointing to the holiday crowds going to and fro—“why do they
not all come to listen?”
“Master doth come by times,” said Tibble, in the tone of irony that was
hard to understand. “He owneth the dean as a rare preacher.”
Ambrose did not try to understand. He exclaimed again, panting as if
his thoughts were too strong for his words—“Lo you, that preacher—dean
call ye him?—putteth a soul into what hath hitherto been to me but a
dead and empty framework.”
Tibble held out his hand almost unconsciously, and Ambrose pressed it.
Man and boy, alike they had felt the electric current of that truth,
which, suppressed and ignored among man’s inventions, was coming as a
new revelation to many, and was already beginning to convulse the
Church and the world.
Ambrose’s mind was made up on one point. Whatever he did, and wherever
he went, he felt the doctrine he had just heard as needful to him as
vital air, and he must be within reach of it. This, and not the
hermit’s cell, was what his instinct craved. He had always been a
studious, scholarly boy, supposed to be marked out for a clerical life,
because a book was more to him than a bow, and he had been easily
trained in good habits and practices of devotion; but all in a childish
manner, without going beyond simple receptiveness, until the
experiences of the last week had made a man of him, or more truly, the
Pardon chapel and Dean Colet’s sermon had made him a new being, with
the realities of the inner life opened before him.
His present feeling was relief from the hideous load he had felt while
dwelling on the Dance of Death, and therewith general goodwill to all
men, which found its first issue in compassion for Giles Headley, whom
he found on his return seated on the steps—moody and miserable.
“Would that you had been with us,” said Ambrose, sitting down beside
him on the step. “Never have I heard such words as to-day.”
“I would not be seen in the street with that scarecrow,” murmured
Giles. “If my mother could have guessed that he was to be set over me,
I had never come here.”
“Surely you knew that he was foreman.”
“Yea, but not that I should be under him—I whom old Giles vowed should
be as his own son—I that am to wed yon little brown moppet, and be
master here! So, forsooth,” he said, “now he treats me like any common
low-bred prentice.”
“Nay,” said Ambrose, “an if you were his son, he would still make you
serve. It’s the way with all craftsmen—yea and with gentlemen’s sons
also. They must be pages and squires ere they can be knights.”
“It never was the way at home. I was only bound prentice to my father
for the name of the thing, that I might have the freedom of the city,
and become head of our house.”
“But how could you be a wise master without learning the craft?”
“What are journeymen for?” demanded the lad. “Had I known how Giles
Headley meant to serve me, he might have gone whistle for a husband for
his wench. I would have ridden in my Lady of Salisbury’s train.”
“You might have had rougher usage there than here,” said Ambrose.
“Master Headley lays nothing on you but what he has himself proved. I
would I could see you make the best of so happy a home.”
“Ay, that’s all very well for you, who are certain of a great man’s
house.”
“Would that I were certified that my brother would be as well off as
you, if you did but know it,” said Ambrose. “Ha! here come the dishes!
’Tis supper time come on us unawares, and Stephen not returned from
Mile End!”
Punctuality was not, however, exacted on these summer Sunday evenings,
when practice with the bow and other athletic sports were enjoined by
Government, and, moreover, the youths were with so trustworthy a member
of the household as Kit Smallbones.
Sundry City magnates had come to supper with Master Headley, and
whether it were the effect of Ambrose’s counsel, or of the example of a
handsome lad who had come with his father, one of the worshipful guild
of Merchant Taylors, Giles did vouchsafe to bestir himself in waiting,
and in consideration of the effort it must have cost him, old Mrs.
Headley and her son did not take notice of his blunders, but only
Dennet fell into a violent fit of laughter, when he presented the
stately alderman with a nutmeg under the impression that it was an
overgrown peppercorn. She suppressed her mirth as well as she could,
poor little thing, for it was a great offence in good manners, but she
was detected, and, only child as she was, the consequence was the being
banished from the table and sent to bed.
But when, after supper was over, Ambrose went out to see if there were
any signs of the return of Stephen and the rest, he found the little
maiden curled up in the gallery with her kitten in her arms.
“Nay!” she said, in a spoilt-child tone, “I’m not going to bed before
my time for laughing at that great oaf! Nurse Alice says he is to wed
me, but I won’t have him! I like the pretty boy who had the good dog
and saved father, and I like you, Master Ambrose. Sit down by me and
tell me the story over again, and we shall see Kit Smallbones come
home. I know he’ll have beaten the brewer’s fellow.”
Before Ambrose had decided whether thus far to abet rebellion, she
jumped up and cried: “Oh, I see Kit! He’s got my ribbon! He has won the
match!”
And down she rushed, quite oblivious of her disgrace, and Ambrose
presently saw her uplifted in Kit Smallbones’ brawny arms to utter her
congratulations.
Stephen was equally excited. His head was full of Kit Smallbones’
exploits, and of the marvels of the sports he had witnessed and joined
in with fair success. He had thought Londoners poor effeminate
creatures, but he found that these youths preparing for the trained
bands understood all sorts of martial exercises far better than any of
his forest acquaintance, save perhaps the hitting of a mark. He was
half wild with a boy’s enthusiasm for Kit Smallbones and Edmund
Burgess, and when, after eating the supper that had been reserved for
the late comers, he and his brother repaired to their own chamber, his
tongue ran on in description of the feats he had witnessed and his
hopes of emulating them, since he understood that Archbishop as was my
Lord of York, there was a tilt-yard at York House. Ambrose, equally
full of his new feelings, essayed to make his brother a sharer in them,
but Stephen entirely failed to understand more than that his book-worm
brother had heard something that delighted him in his own line of
scholarship, from which Stephen had happily escaped a year ago!