“Will they wed her to thee? That were rarely good, so they gave thee some good office!” cried his aunt.
“Nay, nay,” said Ambrose. “I have much to learn and understand ere I think of a wife—if ever. Nay! But when they had heard all I could tell them, they looked at one another, and the Dean said, ‘The maid is no doubt of high blood in her own land—scarce a mate for a London butcher or currier.”
“‘It were matching an Arab mare with a costard monger’s colt,’ said my master, ‘or Angelica with Ralph Roisterdoister.’”
“I’d like to know what were better for the poor outlandish maid than to give her to some honest man,” put in Perronel.
“The end of it was,” said Ambrose, “that Sir Thomas said he was to be at the palace the next day, and he would strive to move the Queen to take her countrywoman into her service. Yea, and so he did, but though Queen Katharine was moved by hearing of a fatherless maid of Spain, and at first spake of taking her to wait on herself, yet when she heard the maid’s name, and that she was of Moorish blood, she would none of her. She said that heresy lurked in them all, and though Sir Thomas offered that the Dean or the Queen’s own chaplain should question her on the faith, it was all lost labour. I heard him tell the Dean as much, and thus it is that they bade me come for thee, and for the maid, take boat, and bring you down to Chelsea, where Sir Thomas will let her be bred up to wait on his little daughters till he can see what best may be done for her. I trow his spirit was moved by the Queen’s hardness! I heard the Dean mutter, ‘Et venient ab Oriente et Occidente.’”
Perronel hooked alarmed. “The Queen deemed her heretic in grain! Ah! She is a good wench, and of kind conditions. I would have no ill befall her, but I am glad to be rid of her. Sir Thomas—he is a wise man, ay, and a married man, with maidens of his own, and he may have more wit in the business than the rest of his kind. Be the matter instant?”
“Methinks Sir Thomas would have it so, since this being a holy day, the courts be not sitting, and he is himself at home, so that he can present the maid to his lady. And that makes no small odds.”
“Yea, but what the lady is makes the greater odds to the maid, I trow,” said Perronel anxiously.
“Fear not on that score. Dame Alice More is of kindly conditions, and will be good to any whom her lord commends to her; and as to the young ladies, never saw I any so sweet or so wise as the two elder ones, specially Mistress Margaret.”
“Well-a-day! What must be must!” philosophically observed Perronel. “Now I have my wish, I could mourn over it. I am loth to part with the wench; and my man, when he comes home, will make an outcry for his pretty Ally; but ’tis best so. Come, Alice, girl, bestir thyself. Here’s preferment for thee.”