They made him tell his whole life, and asked many questions about Abenali, specially about the fragment of Arabic scroll which had been clutched in his hand even as he lay dying. They much regretted never having known of his existence till too late. “Jewels lie before the unheeding!” said More. Then Ambrose was called on to show a specimen of his own penmanship, and to write from Sir Thomas’s dictation in English and in Latin. The result was that he was engaged to act as one of the clerks Sir Thomas employed in his occupations alike as lawyer, statesman, and scholar.
“Methinks I have seen thy face before,” said Sir Thomas, looking keenly at him. “I have beheld those black eyes, though with a different favour.”
Ambrose blushed deeply. “Sir, it is but honest to tell you that my mother’s brother is jester to my Lord Cardinal.”
“Quipsome Hal Merriman! Patch as the King calleth him!” exclaimed Sir Thomas. “A man I have ever thought wore the motley rather from excess, than infirmity, of wit.”
“Nay, sir, so please you, it was his good heart that made him a jester,” said Ambrose, explaining the story of Randall and his Perronel in a few words, which touched the friends a good deal, and the Dean remembered that she was in charge of the little Moresco girl. He lost nothing by dealing thus openly with his new master, who promised to keep his secret for him, then gave him handsel of his salary, and bade him collect his possessions, and come to take up his abode in the house of the More family at Chelsea.
He would still often see his brother in the intervals of attending Sir Thomas to the courts of law, but the chief present care was to get the boys into purer air, both to expedite their recovery and to ensure them against being dragged into the penitential company who were to ask for their lives on the 22nd of May, consisting of such of the prisoners who could still stand or go—for jail-fever was making havoc among them, and some of the better-conditioned had been released by private interest. The remainder, not more than half of the original two hundred and seventy-eight, were stripped to their shirts, had halters hung round their necks, and then, roped together as before, were driven through the streets to Westminster, where the King sat enthroned. There, looking utterly miserable, they fell on their knees before him, and received his pardon for their misdemeanours. They returned to their masters, and so ended that Ill May-day, which was the longer remembered because one Churchill, a ballad-monger in St. Paul’s Churchyard, indited a poem on it, wherein he swelled the number of prentices to two thousand, and of the victims to two hundred. Will Wherry, who escaped from among the prisoners very forlorn, was recommended by Ambrose to the work of a carter at the Dragon, which he much preferred to printing.
CHAPTER XIX.
AT THE ANTELOPE
“Say, Father Thames, for thou hast seen
Full many a sprightly race,
Disporting on thy margent green,
The paths of pleasure trace.”
—Gray.
Master Hope took all the guests by boat to Windsor, and very soon the little party at the Antelope was in a state of such perfect felicity as became a proverb with them all their lives afterwards. It was an inn wherein to take one’s ease, a large hostel full of accommodation for man and horse, with a big tapestried room of entertainment below, where meals were taken, with an oriel window with a view of the Round Tower, and above it a still more charming one, known as the Red Rose, because one of the Dukes of Somerset had been wont to lodge there. The walls were tapestried with the story of St. Genoveva of Brabant, fresh and new on Mrs. Streatfield’s marriage; there was a huge bed with green curtains of that dame’s own work, where one might have said