Perhaps the grinding match had not been as unobserved as Stephen fancied, for on returning to work, Smallbones, who presided over all the rougher parts of the business, claimed them both. He set Stephen to stand by him, sort out and hand him all the rivets needed for a suit of proof armour that hung on a frame, while he required Giles to straighten bars of iron heated to a white heat. Ere long Giles called out for Stephen to change places, to which Smallbones coolly replied, “Turnabout is the rule here, master.”
“Even so,” replied Giles, “and I have been at work like this long enough, ay, and too long!”
“Thy turn was a matter of three hours this morning,” replied Kit—not coolly, for nobody was cool in his den, but with a brevity which provoked a laugh.
“I shall see what my cousin the master saith!” cried Giles in great wrath.
“Ay, that thou wilt,” returned Kit, “if thou dost loiter over thy business, and hast not those bars ready when called for.”
“He never meant me to be put on work like this, with a hammer that breaks mine arm.”
“What! crying out for that!” said Edmund Burgess, who had just come in to ask for a pair of tongs. “What wouldst say to the big hammer that none can wield save Kit himself?”
Giles felt there was no redress, and panted on, feeling as if he were melting away, and with a dumb, wild rage in his heart, that could get no outlet, for Smallbones was at least as much bigger than he as he was than Stephen. Tibble was meanwhile busy over the gilding and enamelling of Buckingham’s magnificent plate armour in Italian fashion, but he had found time to thrust into Ambrose’s hand an exceedingly small and curiously folded billet for Lucas Hansen, the printer, in case of need. “He would be found at the sign of the Winged Staff, in Paternoster Row,” said Tibble, “or if not there himself, there would be his servant who would direct Ambrose to the place where the Dutch printer lived and worked.” No one was at leisure to show the lad the way, and he set out with a strange feeling of solitude, as his path began decisively to be away from that of his brother.
He did not find much difficulty in discovering the quadrangle on the south side of the minster where the minor canons lived near the deanery; and the porter, a stout lay brother, pointed out to him the doorway belonging to Master Alworthy. He knocked, and a young man with a tonsured head but a bloated face opened it. Ambrose explained that he had brought a letter from the Warden of St. Elizabeth’s College at Winchester.
“Give it here,” said the young man.