Dacre shook his head, and answered, "I will to rest, Richard, such as I can find; for now that I have got this craven's reply, I have no further business here till I join you again upon our pilgrimage. I will away to-morrow, to prepare; but we shall meet before I go. I know my way."
CHAPTER VII.
[THE CORONATION.]
Five days after the events related in the last chapter, Richard of Woodville, leaving armourers and tailors busy in his house at Meon, rode away for London, accompanied by two yeomen, a page, and Ned Dyram, whose talents had not been long in displaying themselves in the service of his new master. He had instructed the tailors; he had assisted the armourers; he had aided to choose the horses; he had drawn figures for fresh pallettes and pauldrons; and he had with his own hand manufactured a superb bridle and bit, ornamented with gilt steel plates; jesting, laughing, talking, all the while, and overcoming the obstinacy and the vanity of the old artificers, who would fain have equipped the young gentleman who employed them, in the fashions of the early part of the last reign, all new inventions in those days travelling slowly from the capital to the country. Ned Dyram, however, had been in many lands, and had accumulated, in a head which possessed extraordinary powers both of observation and memory, an enormous quantity of patterns and designs of everything new or strange, which he had seen; and sometimes with a laugh, sometimes with an argument, he drove those who were inclined to resist all innovation, to adopt his proposed improvements greatly against their will. But though his tongue occasionally ran fast, and he seemed to take a pleasure occasionally in confounding his slower opponents with a torrent of words, yet on all subjects but those immediately before him, he kept his own counsel, and not one of the servants of the house, when he set out with Woodville for London, was aware of who or what he was, whence he came, or where he had gained so much knowledge.
The first day's journey was a long one, and Richard of Woodville and his train were not many miles from London, when they again set forth early on the following morning, so that it was not yet noon, on the ninth of April, when they approached the city of Westminster, along the banks of the Thames.
Winding in and out, through fields and hedge-rows, where now are houses, manufactories, and prisons, with the soft air of Spring breathing upon them, and the scent of the early cowslips, for which that neighbourhood was once famous, rising up and filling the whole air, they came on, now catching, now losing, the view of the large heavy abbey church of Westminster, and its yet unfinished towers of the same height as the main building, while rising tall above it, appeared the belfry of St. Stephen's chapel, with its peaked roof, open at the sides, displaying part of the three enormous bells, one of which was said (falsely) to weigh thirty thousand pounds. The top of two other towers might also be seen, from time to time, over the trees, and also part of the buildings of the monastery adjoining the Abbey; but these were soon lost, as the lane which the travellers were following wound round under the west side of Tote Hill, a gentle elevation covered with greensward, and ornamented with clumps of oak, and beech, and fir, amidst which might be discovered, here and there, some large stone houses, richly ornamented with sculpture, and surrounded with their own gardens. The lanes, the paths, the fields, were filled with groups of people in their holiday costume, all flocking towards Westminster; and what with the warm sunshine, the greenness of the grass, the tender verdure of the young foliage, and the gay dresses of the people, the whole scene was as bright and lively as it is possible to conceive. At the same time, the loud bells of St. Stephen's began to ring with the merriest tones they could produce, and a distant "Hurrah!" came upon the wind.
"Now, Ned, which is the way?" asked Richard of Woodville, calling up his new attendant to his side, as they came to a spot where the lane divided into two branches, one taking the right hand side of the hill, and one the left. "This seems the nearest," he continued, pointing down the former; "but I know nought of the city."
"The nearest may prove the farthest," replied Ned Dyram, riding up, "as it often does, my master. That is the shortest, good sooth! but they call the shortest often the fool's way; and we might be made to look like fools, if we took it--for though it leads round to the end of St. Stephen's Lane, methinks that to-day none will be admitted to the palace-court by that gate, as it is the King's coronation morning."
"Indeed!" said Woodville; "I knew not that it was so."
"Nor I, either," answered Ned; "but I know it now."