Chapter One.
At Stourbridge Fair.
“Have at him, Peter!”
“Roll him in the mud!”
“Nay, now, ’twere rarer sport to duck the lubber in the river!”
These and a hundred other taunts were hurled with entire freedom at the head of a sturdy boy, to judge from his round and rosy face not more than eleven years old, by six or eight urchins, who were dancing round him with many unfriendly demonstrations. Apparently there had already been an exchange of hostilities. One of the half-dozen had received a blow in the eye which had half closed that organ and another showed signs of having suffered on the nose, much to the damage of his clothing; these injuries had evidently enraged and excited the sufferers. Prudence, however, was not forgotten. They egged each other to the attack, but at the same time showed signs of hesitation, perhaps for want of a leader who might organise a simultaneous rush.
The boy, meanwhile, though he too bore marks of the fray, for his clothes were torn, and a streak of blood on his cheek showed where he had been hit by a stone or a stick, kept a valiant front. He stood with his back against a fine oak, and flourished a short stout cudgel.
“Come on, come on, all of you!” he shouted. “A broken crown the first shall have, I promise you!”
“He’s threatening thee, Jack Turner. Hit him over the pate!”
“Look at his jerkin—he’s one of the Flemish hogs.”
“Flemish!” cried the boy indignantly. “Better English than all of you put together. No English that I know are cowards!”
The dreadfulness of such a charge overcame all fears of broken heads. With a yell of rage the urchins rushed pell-mell upon their foe, and battle, indeed, arose! He defended himself with a courage and vigour worthy of all praise, hitting at weak points, and bestowing at least two of his promised broken heads. But numbers will prevail over the most determined bravery, and here were at least a dozen kicking legs and encumbering arms. Do what he would he could not shake them off, blows rained upon him under which he turned dizzy, and his evil case would soon have been exchanged for a worse, if an unexpected ally had not rushed upon the group. A splendid deer-hound crashed in upon them, upsetting two or three of the boys, though more as if he were amusing himself with a rough frolic than with thought of harm. The urchins, however, did not stay to consider this, for, picking themselves up with cries of terror, they fled as fast as their legs could carry them, leaving sundry spoils behind them in the shape of apples and a spice-cake, which latter the dog, doubtless considering himself entitled to his share of the booty, gobbled up without a moment’s hesitation.
The boy who had been the object of attack was the only one who showed no sign of fear. He stood, breathless and panting, his cheeks crimson, his clothes torn, but with so resolute a determination in his face as proved that he was ready for another fight. Seeing, however, that the hound had no ill intentions, he straightened and shook himself, picked up the cap which had fallen off in the fray, and looked round to see who was near.
He saw for the first time that two persons were watching him with some amusement. One was a boy of about fourteen, the other an elderly man in the grey dress of a Franciscan friar.
“Thou art a sturdy little varlet,” said the friar, coming forward with a smile, “and held thine own right well. But I doubt me how it would have gone, had Wolf not borne in to the rescue. No shame to thee either, for thou wast sorely overmatched. What had brought such a force of rascaille upon thee?”
The boy had grown rather redder, if that were possible, but he spoke out bravely.
“Holy friar, they were angry because this morning I saved a monkey out of their hands. Its master, an Italian, had died, and they called the poor beast a devil’s imp, and were going to stone it to death.”
“I would Wolf had served them worse! But why did they not fight with thee at the time?”
“They were but three then,” said the boy with a laugh.
“Hum. And who are the little varlets? Give me their names, and they shall have a goodly thrashing.”
The boy for the first time hung his head. The other lad, who had been listening impatiently, broke in in French.
“Set Wolf at them in another sort of fashion. I see them still skulking about, and peeping at us from behind the trees—the unmannerly loons! They need to be taught a lesson.”
“Gently, Edgar,” said the friar, laying his hand on his young companion’s arm, “Wolf might prove a somewhat dangerous chastiser. Come, boy, let us have their names,” he added, turning to the other.
“Holy friar,” said the boy eagerly, “I know the French.”
The friar lifted his eyebrows.
“I thought thy tongue had a strange trick about it, but I could have sworn it was Flemish that it resembled.”
“We have just come from Flanders.”
“Not English,” cried Edgar angrily. “If I had known he was one of those blood-sucking foreigners, who fasten like leeches upon our poor country, Wolf should never have bestirred himself to the rescue.”
“Peace,” said the friar more sharply, but before he could say more the younger boy broke in indignantly—
“We are English, good English! My father has but been in Flanders perfecting himself in his trade of wood-carving.”
“And ’twas there you learnt the French?”
“Ay, sir, from the monks.”
“Perhaps also thou hast learnt to read?” pursued the friar, with the smile with which in these days we might ask a ploughboy whether he knew Hebrew.
“A little,” said the boy modestly.
So unexpected was the answer, that the friar started back.
“Why this is amazing!” he said. “Edgar, dost thou hear?”
“Ay. He is training, no doubt, for the monastery,” said the lad carelessly, though looking at the other with amazement.
“Nay,” said the boy sturdily; “no monk’s hood for me. I would be a soldier and fight for King Edward.”
“And what knowest thou of King Edward?” inquired the friar, who evidently found amusement in questioning.
“What all the world knows,” the boy answered sturdily, “that never was a nobler king or truer Englishman.”
“Ay? Learnt you that in Flanders?” said the friar, lifting his eyebrows in some astonishment. “Well, wherever you had it, ’tis good teaching and true, such as men by-and-by will look back and own. And so nothing will serve thee but hard blows? What is thy name?”
“Hugh Bassett, holy friar.”
“Come to the great Stourbridge fair with thy father and mother?”
“My mother is dead. My father has brought some of his carvings here to sell, and we lodge in the sacristan’s house because ’tis too cold in the fields.”
Wolf, at a call from the young lad, had come back from an investigation among the oaks, and was now slobbering affectionately over his young master’s hand; Hugh watching him with deepest interest.
“There is one thing thou hast all but forgotten,” said the friar; “the names of thy tormentors? See, they are still watching and peeping.”
The boy again hung his head.
“What now? Hast lost thy tongue?”
“Nay, father, but—”
“But what?” Then as Hugh muttered something, “What, I am not to know? Yet they were for serving thee badly enough!”
“I would fight them again,” said the boy, looking up boldly.
“I warrant thou wouldst,” said the friar, laughing heartily. “And without a mother, who will mend thy clothes? They have suffered more damage than thy tough head, which looks as if ’twere made to bear blows.”
Hugh glanced with some dismay at his torn jerkin. It was not the first time that the question had presented itself, though the friar’s questions had driven it out of his head. And the elder lad now showed symptoms of impatience.
“May we not be going back, sir?” he said to his companion. “The jongleurs were to be at their play by now, and we are not like to see much out in this green tangle.”
“As thou wilt,” said the good-tempered friar; “I will but make one more proffer to our valiant friend. See here, Hugh, I have a fancy to know the name of the biggest of thine enemies, the one who set the others on thee. Will a groat buy the knowledge? There it is before thine eyes, true English coin, and no base counterfeit pollard. Only the name, and it is thine.”
“Not I!” cried the boy. “I’ll have nothing to do with getting him flogged.”
“Yet I’ll answer for it thy pocket does not see many groats, and what brave things there be to be bought at the fair! Sweets and comfits and spices.”
“They would choke me!”
The friar laughed long, with a fat, noiseless chuckle full of merriment.
“Well,” he said, “I keep my groat, and thou thine honour, and I see that Wolf hath shown himself, as ever, a dog of discretion. Shall we take the boy back to thy father’s lodgings, Edgar, and persuade Mistress Judith to bestow some of her fair mending upon his garments?”
“So as we waste no more time here, I care not,” said the lad impatiently.
Bidding the boy follow, Friar Nicholas and his companion walked away, leaving the wood with its undergrowth of bracken, already looking rather brown and ragged with the past heat of the summer, and first touch of frost sharpening the nights in the low-lying Eastern counties, as is often the case by Michaelmas. At that time, towards the end of the thirteenth century, it need hardly be said that the country presented a very different appearance from that which we see now. Parts were densely wooded, and everywhere trees made a large feature in the landscape, which was little broken by human habitations. The chief clearings were effected in order to provide sheep walks, wool being at that time a large, if not the largest, export; although matters had not as yet arrived at the condition of some fifty years later, when, after England was devastated by the Black Death, and agricultural labour became ruinously dear, serfs were evicted from their huts, and even towns destroyed, in order to gain pasturage for sheep. Under Edward the First things were tending the other way; marshes were drained, waste land was brought into cultivation, and towns were increasing in size and importance. Wheat was dear, animal food cheap. Some of the greater barons lived in almost royal state, but the smaller gentry in a simplicity which in these days would be considered absolute hardship.
With an absence of shops, and with markets bringing in no more than the local produce of a few miles round, it will be easily understood how fairs became a need of the times. They began by people flocking to some Church festival, camping out round the church, and requiring a supply of provisions. The town guilds, setting themselves to supply this want, found here such an opening for trade that the yearly fairs became the chief centres of commerce, and had a complete code of laws and regulations. Privileges were even granted to attract comers, for at a fair no arrest could be made for debts, saving such as were contracted at the fair itself. And it was a fruitful source of revenue, because upon everything bought a small toll was paid by the buyer.
Gradually these fairs increased in importance. English traders travelled to those across the seas, to Leipsic, to Frankfort, even to Russia. Foreigners in their turn brought their wares to England, where the principal yearly fair was held at Stourbridge, near Cambridge, another of scarcely less importance at Bristol, and somewhat lesser ones at Exeter and other towns.
The scene at these fairs, when the weather was favourable, was one of extreme gaiety and stir. As the friar and his young companion, followed by Hugh, walked back towards the town a soft autumnal sun was shining on the fields, where were all sorts of quaint and fantastic erections, and where the business of the fair was at its height. Such people as could find house-room were lodged in the town, but these only bore a moderate proportion to the entire throng, and the less fortunate or poorer ones were forced to be content with tents, rude sheds, and even slighter protection. These formed the background, or were tacked on to the booths on which the varied collection of wares were set forth, and which with their bright colourings gave the whole that gay effect which we now only see in the markets of the more mediaeval of foreign towns. To this must be added a large number of motley costumes: here not only were seen the different orders of English life—the great baron with his wife and children, his retinue, squires, men-at-arms, pages; the abbot riding in little less state; friars, grey, black, and white; pilgrims—but foreigners, men of Flanders with richly dyed woollen stuffs, woven from English wool; merchants from the Hans towns displaying costly furs; eastern vendors of frankincense, and spices, and sugar; Lombard usurers; even the Chinaman from Cathay, as China was then called, with his stores of delicate porcelain—each and all calling attention to their wares, and inviting the passers-by, whether nobles or churls, to buy.
The fair originated in a grant to the hospital of lepers at Cambridge, bestowed by King John. It opened on the nineteenth of September, continued for two or three weeks, and was under the control of the master of the leper-house, no slight undertaking when the great concourse of people is considered, for not only had they to be housed and fed, but at a time when carriages and carts were unknown, and men and merchandise were alike carried on horses and mules, there must necessarily have been a vast number of beasts to keep. Protection had to be afforded against possible attacks of robbers or outlaws, and—almost the most difficult task of all—it was necessary to check as far as possible quarrels which frequently arose between the haughty barons or their retainers, as also to protect the foreigners from the rough treatment which it was not unlikely they would receive should anything excite the people against them. Particularly, and it must be owned justly, was this at times the case with the usurers.
But though the nominal business of the fair consisted in trading, money-getting, and money-lending, there were plenty of shows and amusements to attract those who loved laughter. In one part a number of lads were throwing the bar, in another they were playing at what seemed a rough kind of tennis. Merry Andrews tumbled on the green, rope dancers performed prodigies of activity; here men played at single-stick, wrestled, or shot at a mark; at another place were the jongleurs or conjurers, and in yet another a bespangled company of dancing dogs, which excited the lordly contempt of Wolf.
“These fellows have rare skill,” said Edgar, watching a conjurer effect a neat multiplication of balls.
“Stay and watch them,” said the friar. “Thy father will not yet have ridden back from Cambridge, and thou art not wanted in the house. I will go and do my best to gain Mistress Judith’s good aid for this urchin, and after that, if he will, he may show me where he lodges.”
Sir Thomas de Trafford, knight of the shire, and father of the lad Edgar, had found accommodation for his family in a house which we should now consider very inadequate for such a purpose, though it was then held to have made a considerable stride towards absolute luxury from being able to boast a small parlour, or talking room. Neither glass nor chimneys, however, were yet in use, although the latter were not unknown, and had crept into some of the greater castles. Fires were made in the centre of the rooms, and the pungent wood smoke made its escape as best it could through door or windows, which in rough weather or at night were protected by a lattice of laths.
The friar, however, went no further than the passage, where he called for Mistress Judith, and was presently answered in person by a somewhat crabbed-looking personage, who listened sourly to his entreaty that she would do something towards stitching together Hugh’s unfortunate jerkin.
“The poor varlet has no mother,” he ended. But Mistress Judith pursed her mouth.
“The more need he should be careful of his clothing,” she was beginning, when suddenly with a rush two little golden-haired girls of not more than four or five came running along the passage, calling joyfully upon Friar Nicholas, and clinging to his grey cloak.
“Thou wilt take us to the fair, wilt thou not?”
“And let us see the monkey that runs up the ladder, and the dancing bear, and—we have some nuts for the monkey.”
Mistress Judith’s face relaxed.
“Nay, now, children, ye must not be troublesome. The good friar has doubtless other business on hand—”
“I’ll take them, I’ll take them,” said the friar, hastily, “if you will put the boy in order by a few touches of your skilful handiwork. As soon as I have bestowed him in safety I will return for them.”
“To see the monkey,” persisted little Eleanor.
“Ay, if thou wilt—” He was interrupted by a pull of the sleeve from Hugh.
“So please you, holy friar,” said the boy shyly, “the monkey is at our lodging.”
“What, is that the poor beast which those young villains would have stoned? Nay, then, hearken, little maidens. The monkey has been in evil case, and was like to be in worse but for this boy, Hugh Bassett. And the cruel varlets who would have killed it set upon him for delivering it, and though he fought right sturdily he would have been in evil case but for Wolf.”
“Our Wolf?”
“Even so. What say you now?”
“He is a good boy,” said the little Anne gravely. Eleanor went nearer, and looked steadfastly at Hugh.
“Is the poor monkey at your house?”
“Ay, little mistress.”
“Shall we come and see him?”
Hugh looked uncertainly at the friar, and the friar at Mistress Judith. Mistress Judith threaded her needle afresh.
“If my lady—” began the friar.
“My lady does not permit my young mistresses to run about the fair like churls’ children,” interrupted the nurse sourly. “Marry, come up! I marvel your reverence should have thought of such a thing.”
She was interrupted in her turn. Eleanor had clambered on a chair and flung her arms round her neck, laying hold of her chin and turning it so as to look in her face, and press her rosy lips to her cheek.
“Nay, nay, mother said we should see the monkey! Thou wilt come with us, and Friar Nicholas, and this good boy. Say yea, say yea, good nurse!”
Mistress Judith, rock with all others, was but soft clay in the hands of her nurslings. She remonstrated feebly, it is true, but Eleanor had her way, and it was not long before the little party set forth, the children indulging in many skips and jumps, and chattering freely in their graceful langue de Provence.
There was so much to see, and so many remarks to be made on many things, such wonderful and undreamt of crowds, such enchanting goods, such popinjays, such booths of cakes, such possibilities of spending a silver penny, that it seemed as if the sacristan’s house would never be reached, and ’twas easy to see it cost the children something to turn from the fair towards the church. Perhaps Anne would have consented to put their object aside and remain in this busy scene of enchantment. But nothing to Eleanor could balance her desire to see the monkey, and they went their way with no further misadventure than arose from the bag of nuts slipping from her little fingers, and the nuts scattering in all directions.
The sacristan’s house consisted of but one room, with the fire as usual in the centre. The sacristan himself was in the church; over the fire sat a thin pale-faced man, engaged in putting the last strokes to a carved oaken box of most delicate workmanship. The monkey, which had been sitting with him, directly the little party appeared, uttered a cry of fear, sprang on the high back of a bench, and from thence to the uncovered rafters of the roof, where it sat jabbering indignantly, and glancing at the visitors with its bright eyes.
The man, who was Stephen Bassett, Hugh’s father, rose and greeted them respectfully, though with some amazement at seeing his boy in unknown company.
“Welcome, holy friar,” he said. “If you seek John the sacristan, Hugh shall run and fetch him from the church.”
“Nay,” said the friar, with his easy smile, “I fear me we are on a lighter quest. These little maidens had a longing to behold the monkey, and thy boy offered to bring them here for that purpose.” Mistress Judith looked unutterable disgust at the poor room and her surroundings, though she condescended to sit down on a rough stool, from which she first blew the dust. The friar entered into conversation with Stephen Bassett, and the little golden-haired girls pressed up to Hugh.
“Make him come down,” said Eleanor pointing.
“He is frightened—I know not,” said Hugh, shaking his head. He was, however, almost as anxious as the other children could be to show off his new possession, and, thanks either to an offered nut, or to the trust which the monkey instinctively felt towards his deliverer, the little creature came swiftly down, hanging by hand and tail from the rafters, to intensest delight of both Anne and Eleanor, and finally leaping upon Hugh’s shoulder, where it cracked its nut with all the confidence possible. It was small and rather pretty, and it wore much such a little coat as monkeys wear now. Eleanor could not contain her delight. She wanted to have it in her own arms, but her first attempt to remove it from its perch brought such a storm of angry chattering that Anne in terror plucked her sister’s little gown and implored her to come away. Eleanor drew back unwillingly.
“Why doesn’t he like me?” she demanded. “I love him. What is his name?”
“Agrippa.”
“Agrippa! And can he do tricks? Yesterday he did tricks.”
“He knows me not yet, mistress,” explained Hugh. “His master died suddenly, and he had no other friend.”
“But thou wilt be his friend,” said Eleanor, looking earnestly at the boy, “and so will I. I will leave him all these nuts. Anne, I would my father would give us a monkey!”
“I like him not,” said Anne, fearfully withdrawing yet closer to Mistress Judith. Eleanor knew no fear. She would have taken the little creature in her arms, regardless of its sharp teeth, or of the waiting woman’s remonstrances, but that Hugh would not suffer her to make the attempt. He looked at the two little girls with an eager pride and admiration, felt as if he were responsible for all that happened, and had he been twice his age could not have treated them with more careful respect.