Darnley; or, The Field of the Cloth of Gold

by G. P. R. James

"Certainly," replied the other, "I can take anything; but I am responsible for nothing. If your horses kick themselves to death in the hold, that is not my fault."

"I will take care of that," said the knight. "Here, Longpole, help me to put off my harness: I cannot sit in it all night."

While the custrel was thus employed in aiding his lord to disarm, the door opened, and in bustled a servant-maid of about two or three-and-thirty, whose rosy cheeks had acquired a deeper tinge by the soft wooing of a kitchen fire, and whose sharp eyes shot forth those brilliant rays generally supposed to be more animated by the wrathful spirit of cookery and of ardent coals than by any softer power or flame. Immediately that she beheld two strangers, forth burst upon the head of William Hans the impending storm. She abused him for telling her that there would only be himself and the captain; she vowed that she had not cooked half salmon enough for four; she declared that she had only put down plates and bread for two; and she ended by protesting that she never in her life had seen anybody so stupid as he himself, William Hans.

To the mind of Sir Osborne, the lady somewhat forgot the respect due to her master; but, however, whether it was from one of those strange, mysterious ascendancies which cooks and housekeepers occasionally acquire over middle-aged single gentlemen, or whether it was from a natural meekness of disposition in the worthy Fleming, he bore it with most exemplary patience; and when want of breath for a moment pulled the check-string of the lady's tongue, he informed her that the two strangers had come unexpectedly. Thereupon, muttering to herself something very like "Why the devil did they come at all!" she set down on the table a dish of hot boiled salmon; and, after flouncing out of the room, returned with the air of the most injured person in the world, bringing in a platter-full of dried peas, likewise boiled.

These various ingredients (the salmon was salted) William Hans immediately seized upon, and emptied them into the great bowl we have already mentioned. Then casting off his gown, and tucking up the sleeves of his coat, he mashed them all together; adding various slices of some well-preserved pippins, a wooden spoon's capacity of fine oil, and three of vinegar. Fancy such a mess to eat at eleven o'clock at night, and then go to bed and dream! Boiled salmon and peas! apples and oil! and vinegar to crown it!

However, Sir Osborne resisted the tempting viands, and contented himself with some of the plain bread, although both the merchant and the captain pressed him several times to partake; assuring him, while the oil and vinegar ran out at the corners of their mouths, that it was "very coot; very coot indeed; excellent!" And so much did they seem to enjoy it, that the unhappy Longpole was tempted for his sins to taste the egregious compound, and begged a small quantity at the hands of good Master Hans. The bountiful merchant shovelled a waggon-load of it upon his plate, and the yeoman, fancying himself bound in common politeness to eat it, contrived to swallow three whole mouthfuls with a meekness and patience that in the succeeding reign would have classed him with the martyrs; but at the fourth his humanity rebelled, and thrusting the plate from him with a vehemence that nearly overturned all the rest, "No!" cried he. "No, by----! there is no standing that!"

The merchant and his countryman chuckled amazingly at poor Longpole's want of taste, and even the knight, albeit in no very laughter-loving mood, could not help smiling at his custrel's discomfiture. But as all things must come to an end, the salt salmon and peas were at length concluded, and some marmalades and confections substituted in their place, which proved much more suitable to the taste of such of the company as were uninitiated in the mysteries of Flemish cookery.

With the sweatmeats came the wines, which were all of peculiar rarity and excellence; for in this particular, at least, William Hans was a man of no small taste, which he kept indeed in continual practice. Not that we would imply that he drank too much or too often, but still the god of the gilded horns had been gently fingering his nose, and with a light and skilful pencil had decorated all the adjacent parts with a minute and delicate tracery of interwoven rosy lines.

As the wine diffused itself over his stomach, it seemed to buoy up his heart to his lips. Prudence, too, slackened her reins, and on went his tongue, galloping as a beggar's horse is reported to do, on a way that shall be nameless. Many were the things he said which he should not have said, and many were the things he told which would have been better left untold. Amongst others, he acknowledged himself a Lutheran, which in that age, if it tended to find out bliss in the other world, was very likely to bring down damnation in this. He averred that he looked upon the Bishop of Rome, as he called the pope, in the light of that Babylonish old lady whose more particular qualification is not fit for ears polite; and he confessed that when Dr. Fitz-James, the Bishop of London, had bought up all the translations of the Bible he could find, and burnt them all at Paul's Cross, he had furnished the furious Romanist with a whole cargo of incomplete copies. "So that," continued he, "the bishop damned his own soul the more completely by burning God's Word, and paid the freight and binding of a new and complete set into the bargain." And he chuckled and grinned with mercantile glee at his successful speculation, and with puritanic triumph over the persecutors of his sect.

Sir Osborne soon began to be weary of the scene, and begged to know where he should find his chamber, upon which Master Hans rose to conduct him, with perfect steadiness of limb, the wine having affected nothing but his tongue. Lighting a lamp, he preceded the knight with great reverence; and while Longpole followed with the armour, he led the way up a little narrow stair to a small room, the walls of which, though not covered with arras, were hung with painted canvass, after a common fashion of the day, representing the whole history of Jonah and the whale; wherein the fish was decidedly cod, and the sea undoubtedly butter and parsley, notwithstanding anything that the scientific may say to such an assemblage. The ship was evidently one that would have sunk in any sea except that she was in: she could not have sailed across Chancery Lane in a wet day without foundering; and, as if to render her heavier, the artist had stowed her to the head with Dutchmen, rendering her, like the dinde à la Sainte Alliance (viz. a turkey stuffed with woodcocks), one heavy thing crammed full of another.