"Art thou come, dear heart?" said Alice Mount, as her daughter ran
hurriedly into her bedchamber. "That is well. Rose, the Master is
come, and calleth for us, and He must find us ready."
There was no time to say more, for steps were ascending the stairs, and
in another minute Master Simnel entered--the Bailiff of Colchester
Hundred, whose office it was to arrest criminals within his boundaries.
He was a rough, rude sort of man, from whom women were wont to shrink.
"Come, mistress, turn out!" said he. "We'll find you other lodgings for
a bit."
"Master, I will do mine utmost," said Alice Mount, lifting her aching
head from the pillow; "but I am now ill at ease, and I pray you, give
leave for my daughter to fetch me drink ere I go hence, or I fear I may
scarce walk."
We must remember that they had then no tea, coffee, or cocoa; and they
had a funny idea that cold water was excessively unwholesome. The rich
drank wine, and the poor thin, weak ale, most of which they brewed
themselves from simple malt and hops--not at all like the strong,
intoxicating stuff which people drink in public-houses now.
Mr Simnel rather growlingly assented to the request. Rose ran down,
making her way to the dresser through the rough men of whom the kitchen
was full, to get a jug and a candlestick. As she came out of the
kitchen, with the jug in her right hand and the candle in her left, she
met a man--I believe he called himself a gentleman--named Edmund Tyrrel,
a relation of that Tyrrel who had been one of the murderers of poor
Edward the Fifth and his brother. Rose dropped a courtesy, as she had
been taught to do to her betters in social position.
Mr Tyrrel stopped her. "Look thou, maid! wilt thou advise thy father
and mother to be good Catholic people?"
Catholic means _general_; and for any one Church to call itself the
Catholic Church, is as much as to say that it is the only Christian
Church, and that other people who do not belong to it are not
Christians. It is, therefore, not only untrue, but most insulting to
all the Christians who belong to other Churches. Saint Paul
particularly warned the Church of Rome not to think herself better than
other Churches, as you will see in the eleventh chapter of the Epistle
to the Romans, verses 17 to 22. But she took no heed, and keeps calling
herself _the_ Catholic Church, as if nobody could be a Christian who did
not belong to her. No Protestant Church has ever committed this sin,
though some few persons in several denominations may have done so.
However, Rose was accustomed to the word, and she knew what Mr Tyrrel
meant. So she answered, gently--
"Master, they have a better instructor than I, for the Holy Ghost doth
teach them, I hope, which I trust shall not suffer them to err." [See
Note 1.]
Mr Tyrrel grew very angry. He remembered that Rose had been before the
magistrates before on account of Protestant opinions, "Why art thou
still in that mind, thou naughty hussy?" cried he. "Marry, it is time
to look upon such heretics indeed."
Naughty was a much stronger word then than it is now. It meant, utterly
worthless and most wicked.
Brave Rose Allen! she lifted her eyes to the face of her insulter, and
replied,--"Sir, with that which you call heresy, do I worship my Lord
God, I tell you truth."
"Then I perceive you will burn, gossip, with the rest for company's
sake," said Mr Tyrrel, making a horrible joke.
"No, sir, not for company's sake," said Rose, "but for my Christ's sake,
if so be I be compelled; and I hope in His mercies, if He call me to it,
He will enable me to bear it."
Never did apostle or martyr answer better, nor bear himself more
bravely, than this girl! Mr Tyrrel was in the habit of looking with
the greatest reverence on certain other young girls, whom he called
Saint Agnes, Saint Margaret, and Saint Katherine--girls who had made
such answers to Pagan persecutors, twelve hundred years or so before
that time: but he could not see that the same scene was being enacted
again, and that he was persecuting the Lord Jesus in the person of young
Rose Allen. He took the candle from her hand, and she did not resist
him. The next minute he was holding her firmly by the wrist, with her
hand in the burning flame, watching her face to see what she would do.
She did nothing. Not a scream, not a word, not even a moan, came from
the lips of Rose Allen. All that could be seen was that the empty jug
which she held in the other hand trembled a little as she stood there.
"Wilt thou not cry?" sneered Tyrrel as he held her,--and he called her
some ugly names which I shall not write.
The answer was as calm as it could be. "I have no cause, thank God,"
said Rose tranquilly; "but rather to rejoice. You have more cause to
weep than I, if you consider the matter well."
When people set to work to vex you, nothing makes them more angry than
to take it quietly, and show no vexation. That is, if they are people
with mean minds. If there be any generosity in them, then it is the way
to make them see that they are wrong. There was no generosity, nor love
of justice, in Edmund Tyrrel. When Rose Allen stood so calmly before
him, with her hand on fire, he was neither softened nor ashamed. He
burned her till "the sinews began to crack," and then he let go her hand
and pushed her roughly away, calling her all the bad names he could
think of while he did so.
"Sir," was the meek and Christlike response, "have you done what you
will do?"
Surely few, even among martyrs, have behaved with more exquisite
gentleness than this! The maiden's hand was cruelly burnt, and her
tormentor was adding insult to injury by heaping false and abominable
names upon her: and the worst thing she had to say to him was simply to
ask whether he wished to torture her any more!
"Yes," sneered Tyrrel. "And if thou think it not well, then mend it!"
"`Mend it'!" repeated Rose. "Nay! the Lord mend you, and give you
repentance, if it be His will. And now, if you think it good, begin at
the feet, and burn to the head also. For he that set you a-work shall
pay you your wages one day, I warrant you."
And with this touch of sarcasm--only just enough to show how well she
could have handled that weapon if she had chosen to fight with it--Rose
calmly went her way, wetted a rag, and bound up her injured hand, and
then drew the ale and carried it to her mother.
"How long hast thou been, child!" said her mother, who of course had no
notion what had been going on downstairs.
"Ay, Mother; I am sorry for it," was the quiet reply. "Master Tyrrel
stayed me in talk for divers minutes."
"What said he to thee?" anxiously demanded Alice.
"He asked me if I did mean to entreat you and my father to be good
Catholics; and when I denied the same, gave me some ill words."
Rose said nothing about the burning, and as she dexterously kept her
injured hand out of her mother's sight, all that Alice realised was that
the girl was a trifle less quick and handy than usual.
"She's a good, quick maid in the main," said she to herself: "I'll not
fault her if she's upset a bit."
While Rose was helping her mother to dress, the Bailiff was questioning
her step-father whether any one else was in the house.
"I'm here," said John Thurston, rising from the pallet-bed where he lay
in a corner of the little scullery. "You'd best take me, if you want
me."
"Take them all!" cried Tyrrel. "They be all in one tale, be sure."
"Were you at mass this last Sunday?" said the Bailiff to Thurston. He
was not quite so bad as Tyrrel.
"No, that was I not," answered Thurston firmly.
"Wherefore?"
"Because I will not worship any save God Almighty."
"Why, who else would we have you to worship?"
"Nay, it's not who else, it's what else. You would have me to worship
stocks and stones, that cannot hear nor see; and cakes of bread that the
baker made overnight in his oven. I've as big a throat as other men,
yet can I not swallow so great a notion as that the baker made Him that
made the baker."
"Of a truth, thou art a naughty heretic!" said the Bailiff; "and I must
needs carry thee hence with the rest. But where is thy wife?"
Ay, where was Margaret? Nobody had seen her since the Bailiff knocked
at the door. He ordered his men to search for her; but she had hidden
herself so well that some time passed before she could be found. At
length, with much laughter, one of the Bailiff's men dragged her out of
a wall-closet, where she crouched hidden behind an old box. Then the
Bailiff shouted for Alice Mount and Rose to be brought down, and
proceeded to tie his prisoners together, two and two,--Rose contriving
to slip back, so that she should be marched behind her parents.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Note 1. This part of the story is all quite true, and I am not putting
into Rose's lips, in her conversation with Mr Tyrrel, one word which
she did not really utter.