“‘Your Robin,’ and ‘poor Robin,’ varlets!” cried the principal trooper. “Have a care! What do ye mean by your Robin?”
“Marry, sir soldier,” quoth a butcher, scratching his head, and in a humble voice, “craving your pardon and the king’s, this Master Robin sojourned a short time in this hamlet, and was a kind neighbour, and mighty glib of the tongue. Don’t ye mind, neighbours,” he added rapidly, eager to change the conversation, “how he made us leave off when we were just about burning Adam Warner, the old nigromancer, in his den yonder? Who else could have done that? But an’ we had known Robin had been a rebel to sweet King Edward, we’d have roasted him along with the wizard!”
One of the timbrel-girls, the leader of the choir, her arm round a soldier’s neck, looked up at the last speech, and her eye followed the gesture of the butcher, as he pointed through the open lattice to the sombre, ruinous abode of Adam Warner.
“Was that the house ye would have burned?” she asked abruptly.
“Yes; but Robin told us the king would hang those who took on them the king’s blessed privilege of burning nigromancers; and, sure enough, old Adam Warner was advanced to be wizard-in-chief to the king’s own highness a week or two afterwards.”
The friar had made a slight movement at the name of Warner; he now pushed his stool nearer to the principal group, and drew his hood completely over his countenance.
“Yea!” exclaimed the mechanic, whose son had been the innocent cause of the memorable siege to poor Adam’s dilapidated fortress, related in the first book of this narrative”—yea; and what did he when there? Did he not devise a horrible engine for the destruction of the poor,—an engine that was to do all the work in England by the devil’s help?—so that if a gentleman wanted a coat of mail, or a cloth tunic; if his dame needed a Norwich worsted; if a yeoman lacked a plough or a wagon, or his good wife a pot or a kettle; they were to go, not to the armourer, and the draper, and the tailor, and the weaver, and the wheelwright, and the blacksmith,—but, hey presto! Master Warner set his imps a-churning, and turned ye out mail and tunic, worsted and wagon, kettle and pot, spick and span new, from his brewage of vapour and sea-coal. Oh, have I not heard enough of the sorcerer from my brother, who works in the Chepe for Master Stokton, the mercer!—and Master Stokton was one of the worshipful deputies to whom the old nigromancer had the front to boast his devices.”
“It is true,” said the friar, suddenly.
“Yes, reverend father, it is true,” said the mechanic, doffing his cap, and inclining his swarthy face to this unexpected witness of his veracity. A murmur of wrath and hatred was heard amongst the bystanders. The soldiers indifferently turned to their female companions. There was a brief silence; and, involuntarily, the gossips stretched over the table to catch sight of the house of so demoniac an oppressor of the poor.
“See,” said the baker, “the smoke still curls from the rooftop! I heard he had come back. Old Madge, his handmaid, has bought cimnel-cakes of me the last week or so; nothing less than the finest wheat serves him now, I trow. However, right’s right, and—”