“Yea,” said Ambrose, recollecting that there was little use in returning to the perplexities which Stephen could not enter into. “He deemed that in this mood of mine, yea, and as matters now be at the universities, I had best not as yet study there for the priesthood. But he said he would commend me to a friend whose life would better show me how the new gives life to the old than any man he wots of.”
“One of thy old doctors in barnacles, I trow,” said Stephen.
“Nay, verily. We saw him t’other night perilling his life to stop the poor crazy prentices, and save the foreigners. Dennet and our uncle saw him pleading for them with the King.”
“What! Sir Thomas More?”
“Ay, no other. He needs a clerk for his law matters, and the Dean said he would speak of me to him. He is to sup at the Deanery to-morrow, and I am to be in waiting to see him. I shall go with a lighter heart now that thou art beyond the clutches of the captain of Newgate.”
“Speak no more of that!” said Stephen, with a shudder. “Would that I could forget it!”
In truth Stephen’s health had suffered enough to change the bold, high-spirited, active lad, so that he hardly knew himself. He was quite incapable of work all the next day, and Mistress Headley began to dread that he had brought home jail fever, and insisted on his being inspected by the barber-surgeon, Todd, who proceeded to bleed the patient, in order, as he said, to carry off the humours contracted in the prison. He had done the same by Jasper Hope, and by Giles, but he followed the treatment up with better counsel, namely, that the lads should all be sent out of the City to some farm where they might eat curds and whey, until their strength should be restored. Thus they would be out of reach of the sweating sickness which was already in some of the purlieus of St. Katharine’s Docks, and must be specially dangerous in their lowered condition.
Master Hope came in just after this counsel had been given. He had a sister married to the host of a large prosperous inn near Windsor, and he proposed to send not only Jasper but Stephen thither, feeling how great a debt of gratitude he owed to the lad. Remembering well the good young Mistress Streatfield, and knowing that the Antelope was a large old house of excellent repute, where she often lodged persons of quality attending on the court or needing country air, Master Headley added Giles to the party at his own expense, and wished also to send Dennet for greater security, only neither her grandmother nor Mrs. Hope could leave home.
It ended, however, in Perronel Randall being asked to take charge of the whole party, including Aldonza. That little damsel had been in a manner confided to her both by the Dean of St. Paul’s and by Tibble Steelman—and indeed the motherly woman, after nursing and soothing her through her first despair at the loss of her father, was already loving her heartily, and was glad to give her a place in the home which Ambrose was leaving on being made an attendant on Sir Thomas More.
For the interview at the Deanery was satisfactory. The young man, after a good supper, enlivened by the sweet singing of some chosen pupils of St. Paul’s school, was called up to where the Dean sat, and with him, the man of the peculiarly sweet countenance, with the noble and deep expression, yet withal, something both tender and humorous in it.