Chapter Three.
Rescued.
It was time. Stephen Bassett was all but spent, and Hugh, trying his best to shield him, was pressed backwards until, to his terror, he found himself close to the hairy form of the bear. But the instant the knights appeared the throng opened and fled, except the bear-leaders, who, hampered by their unwieldy animal, prepared to put the best face they could on the matter.
For the first few minutes, indeed, there was nothing but trying to quiet the horses, frightened out of their senses by finding themselves in close neighbourhood with the bear, and this gave time for Hugh to look, and to cry out joyfully—
“Father, it is Sir Thomas de Trafford! He will see justice done.”
“How now, my masters?” cried the knight, a dark-haired, bright-eyed man with a red face. “What means this brawling?”
“Your worship,” said Dick-o’-the-Hill, wiping his face with the back of his hand, “these knaves have been taken in the very act of stealing.”
“Is that you, Dick Simpkins?” said Sir Thomas, with a laugh. “I might have guessed that heads could not be broken without your having a hand in the breaking. But the King will have none of this violence, and the Master of the Hospital will have thee up for it, neck and crop.”
Dick, looking somewhat sheep-faced at this view of his conduct, was yet going to reply, when his cousin Matthew pushed forward.
“Hearken not to him, your worship,” he began; “he is an ignorant though a well-meaning knave. But I humbly bid your worship take notice that these men be the culprits who have stolen our property, and, when we would have reclaimed it, set upon us, and were like to have killed us.”
“Killed us forsooth!” muttered Dick, stirred to anger at last.
”—Had your worship not come to our rescue. And as witness, knowing all the circumstances—none better—I claim, if they are put upon their trial, to take my place as one of the twelve jurors. It is a case of flagrant delict.”
The culprits, conscious of their guilt, but not understanding the conversation, stood as pale as death, glancing from one to the other.
“Let us hear in plain words what hath been stolen,” said Sir Thomas, impatiently.
“Please your worship,” said Hugh, stepping forward and holding out the monkey, “it is Agrippa.”
“A monkey! Why, thou must be the urchin my little maidens are for ever chattering about. And Edgar—where is Edgar? Not here? The youngster is stopping in the fair. And did these fellows steal thy monkey?”
Bassett, who had recovered his breath, put in his word.
“Ay, your worship; when we were away at your lady’s, showing her the carved work of mine she would see. We left the door of John the sacristan’s—where we are lodging—shut, and came back to find it open and the monkey gone.”
“Might he not have escaped?”
“He was too timid unless he had been driven forth. Besides, we have evidence that the boy, who hath shown much ill-will already in the matter, was seen to go in at the door with two others. If these men are questioned I believe they will tell us that they bought the beast from these boys, and your worship may hold their fault the less.”
The knight growled something in his beard which was not flattering to foreign traders; but his sense of justice led him to take the course which Bassett suggested, and he put his questions in French to the Italians, who, watching the faces of those around (of whom a considerable number had now collected), were in mortal terror of short shrift. By all the saints in the calendar they vowed that no thought of stealing had crossed their minds. A boy had brought the monkey; they could understand no more than that he wanted to sell it, and, as they were glad of the opportunity, they gave him ten silver pennies for their bargain.
Matthew was greatly vexed not to understand this defence, in which he would have been ready enough to pick holes; but Bassett, knowing that, though true in the main, their story said nothing to explain their denial of having seen the monkey or of its concealment in the bag, kept merciful silence. The men, at any rate, had been punished by fright, and when Sir Thomas de Trafford asked if he demanded that they should be haled back and given over to the college authorities he shook his head.
“E’en let them go, so we have the monkey,” he said.
The knight administered a sharp rating, and bade them tie up their comrade’s broken head and be off; a permission of which they were only too glad to avail themselves, the bear shuffling after them and causing a fresh panic among the horses.
“Quiet, Saladin!” said Sir Thomas, irritably. “Master Carver, somebody must suffer for this, and the boy who stole and sold the beast is the worst offender. Thou—what is thy name—Hugo? Hugh?—what sayest thou should be done to him?”
“Your worship,” said Hugh, tingling all over with eager thrill of hope, “your worship, I should like to fight him.”
“Trial by combat,” said the knight, laughing.
“Nay, nay, he’s a false loon, and that were too honourable a punishment. Here, Dick-o’-the-Hill, thou knowest every knave for miles round, go to the watch, and bid them take the thievish young varlet to the whipping-post, and let him remember it. Tell them I will answer for them to their masters.”
“Tell them,” Matthew called after him, “that it is a case of flagrant delict.”
“Here, Master Carver,” said Sir Thomas, moving his horse a few paces off and beckoning to Bassett, “that boy of thine is a gallant little urchin, and my babies have taken a fancy to him. Wilt thou spare him to us? He shall be well eared for; my lady has but too soft a heart, as I tell her, for the youngsters of the household.”
“I am deeply beholden to your worship,” returned Stephen, hastily. “It sounds ungracious to refuse so good an offer, but I cannot part with him while I live. You may guess from my face that that will not be for long.”
At the first part of this speech Sir Thomas had frowned heavily, but he could not be wroth with the end.
“The more reason,” he said, “that the boy should have a protector.”
“True,” Bassett answered. “I have thought much of that. But I hope to have time yet to place him somewhere where he can follow my craft and build his own fortunes.”
“And you would throw away his advancement for a dream?”
“Is it a dream?” said the carver. “Believe me, your worship, that, although you may find it hard to believe, we men of art have our ambitions as strong in us as in the proudest knight of King Edward’s court. Hugh has that in him which I have fostered and cherished, and which I believe will bear fruit hereafter and bring him, or his art, fame.”
“Small profits, I fear me,” said Sir Thomas.
“That is like enough. It may be not even a name. But something will he have done, as I believe, for the glory of God and the honour of his art.”
“Well,” said the knight, half vexed, “I have made thee a fair offer, and the rest lies with thyself. Where go you after the fair?”
“By Friar Nicholas’s advice, gentle sir, as far as to Exeter. He thinks I may meet with work there and a softer air.”
“Since thy father will have nought better, I must find a gift for thee, boy,” said the knight, reining back his horse. He drew a richly-chased silver whistle from his breast and threw it to the boy. “Take good care of Agrippa; my little Nell would have broken her heart if she had heard he was gone. Good day, friend Matthew; good day, Master Carver.”
The next moment the little party had clattered away, leaving Hugh with thanks faltering on his tongue, and Matthew on tip-toe with pride at his own discernment.
“Never would you have seen your monkey again if I had not collared the knave,” he said. “Now, there is my cousin Dick, an honest fellow as ever swung a flail, but with no thought beyond what he can do with fists and staff; no use of his eyes, no putting two and two together. I’ll warrant me by the time he reaches the watch he will have forgotten the words I put into his mouth; and yet they are the very pith of the matter. I’ll e’en go after him.”
He started off, while Bassett and his boy made their way back towards the church, Hugh ill at ease because, while the pommelling of Peter seemed a fine thing, his doom to the whipping-post, though no more than justice, gave him an uneasy feeling. But his father would hear of no going to beg him off, and, indeed, it would have been bootless. Peter’s offence was one for which whipping might be held a merciful punishment—
“And may save him from turning into a cut-purse later on,” added Bassett.
So Agrippa went back to his rafters and met with no more adventures. The fair ran its usual busy course; the friar came often to talk with Stephen Bassett and to give Hugh exercises in reading and writing; while, more rarely, Eleanor and Anne appeared with Mistress Judith—in great excitement the last time because the next day they were to set forth for their home. September was drawing to an end, the weather was rainy, and Bassett began to make inquiries as to parties who would be travelling the same road as himself. Dick-o’-the-Hill was certain that his cousin Mat would find the right people. He had implicit faith in his sagacity, and came with him in triumph one day to announce success. It seemed that a mercer, his wife, and son were going back to London and would be glad of company. And then it came out that Matthew himself was strongly drawn in the same direction.
“A man,” he explained, “is like to have all his wits dulled who sees and hears none but clodhoppers. I feel at times as if I were no sharper than Dickon here. Now in London the citizens are well to the front. There is the Alderman-burgh, with the Law Courts and the King’s Bench, there is the Lord Mayor, there is the King’s Palace at Westminster and the great church of St. Paul’s; much for a man of understanding to see and meditate upon, Master Bassett, and I have half a mind—”
“Have a whole one, man,” cried the carver, heartily; “and I would Dick would come too.”
“Nay, in London I should be no better than an ass between two bundles of hay,” said honest Dick, shaking his head. “But if Mat goes he will bring us back a pack of news, and maybe might see the king himself.”
It did not take much to give a final push to Matthew’s inclination. He had neither wife nor child, and, as he confided to Bassett, his bag of marks would bear a little dipping into. He bought a horse—or rather Dick bought it for him—the carver agreeing to pay him a certain sum for its partial use during their journey to London, and they set out at last, leaving the fair shorn of its glory.
Folk were travelling in all directions; but London was the goal of the greater number, and the little knots of traders with one consent, for fear of cut-purses, kept well within sight of each other. The road was not bad, although a course of wet weather might quickly convert it into a quagmire; and it was easy enough to follow, for one of the king’s precautions against footpads was the clearing away of all brushwood and undergrowth for a space of two hundred feet on each side of the highway as well as round the gates of towns. A great deal of talk passed between the different groups, for fairs were the very centre of news, foreign and English, political and commercial, with a strong under-current of local gossip. The Hansards, Easterlings, and Lombards had brought the latest information about the French claims to Gascony, as well as much trading information from Bruges, which was then the great seat of commerce; the English merchants discussed the king’s wise and politic measures to promote the unity of the kingdom, a cause which Edward had much at heart, as necessary not only for the greatness but the safety of that England for whose good never king toiled more unselfishly.
It was all deeply interesting to Stephen Bassett, who had left his own country many years before, and was amazed at the strides civil liberties had made since that time. Before this the making and the keeping of laws had depended upon the fancies of the reigning king, checked or enlarged as they might be by the barons. It was Edward the First who called his Commons to assist in the making of these laws, who summoned burgesses from the principal towns throughout the kingdom, who required the consent of the people for Acts proposed in Parliament, and enforced the keeping of these laws so powerfully that his greatest lords could no more break them with impunity than the meanest churl. He set up a fixed standard of weights and measures. Up to this time all attempts in this direction had been failures, and the inconvenience must have been great. He tried to encourage the growth of towns, freeing them from petty local restrictions and introducing staples or fixed markets. Under him taxation became more general and more even. He made a survey of the country yet more important than that of Domesday. And if that honourable hold of plighted word was—at any rate until late years—the proud characteristic of an Englishman, this national virtue, which does not come by chance any more than does a personal virtue, is owing in no small degree to the steady and strong example of the great king, who on his tomb left that bidding to his people—“Pactum serva”—keep covenant.
Hugh, for love of his father, listened as well as he could to the talk; but he had good play-times as well, for there were many boys and girls on the road, and, indeed, the mercer with whom they travelled had his lad of thirteen with him. Agrippa, held by Dame Edith’s silken cord, was an immense object of interest; the mercer’s wife made him a new little coat of scarlet cloth, and, besides the black rye bread which he shared with his masters, the children were never tired of bringing him nuts, costard apples, and spice-nuts, so that he fared well. He showed great affection for Hugh, and was never so happy as when on his shoulder; tolerating Stephen and detesting Matthew.
The hostels were crowded, and the accommodation of the roughest; but it was always a matter of rejoicing to have got through the day’s journey without encounter of outlaws. Highway robbery was one of the evils with which the king had vigorously to contend, and at their last halting-place the host’s wife had such a number of terrible stories at her fingers’ ends as made the more timorous shake in their shoes. She discoursed volubly as she brought in an excellent supper, which they ate with knives, forks being as yet a great luxury.
“Alack-a-day, my masters!” she said. “I wot that shameful things have happened on this very road not so long ago. My lord Abbot from the neighbouring house, having but one brother with him, was seized and robbed, and left bound in the ditch. The thief made off with his palfrey, and that led to his being taken and hung; but the abbot, holy man! has scarce recovered from the shock.”
One story brings another, and Matthew was seldom behindhand when anything had to be said.
“Things be better, however, than they were ten years ago. Then was a time of riot. I mind me I had a cousin, living in Boston, when there came to the gates one night a party of monks wanting room in the monastery. Fine monks were these, for, when all honest citizens were in bed, out they slipped, stripped off their gowns, appeared in doublet and hose of green, and never trust me, my masters, if these merry men did not take the town so completely by surprise that they sacked and set fire to it before they left.”
“There, see now!” cried the hostess, lifting up her hands; “and they might do the same by us now, and we sleeping in our beds like babes!”
“I warrant that was what caused the king to ordain that town gates should be closed between sunset and sunrise, and makes him so strict in the matter,” said a monk who was seated at table, with a good helping of a fish called cropling on his trencher. “Nay, good mistress, look not mistrustfully on me. I wear no cassock of green, only that which belongs to the habit of St. Austin, of which I am an unworthy brother.”
“There be land pirates and sea pirates,” said the little red-faced mercer, pompously; “both be enemies to an honest man’s trade.”
“Alack, I know not how any can venture on the seas!” added his wife, putting her head as much on one side as her stiff gorget would allow.
“There’s terrible venturesome folk nowadays,” put in the hostess, pouring out a tankard of ale.
“They do say that ships be going so far as Spain; never will they come back again, that’s certain.” Bassett listened, smiling, to these doleful conjectures; at the same time, hearing more of the dangers of the highways made him think with some anxiety of the long journey to Exeter which lay before them. His strength had been tried by that now going on, and he wished it had been earlier in the year, when the days had been longer and roads better. But he was naturally hopeful, and, comforting himself with the thought that on the next day, if all was well, they would reach London, he listened patiently to much which Hugh had to tell about his comrades on the road and Agrippa’s cleverness before stretching themselves on the hard pallet which fell to their share in the common room.