“Bless the urchin, he might have been born on board!” The young man looked at Nicholas rather more attentively. “Your father has ships, then?”
Nicholas nodded proudly. “The Rose-in-June, and the Sainte Spirite, and the Thomasyn,—she’s named for mother,—and the Sainte Genevieve, because father was born in Paris, you know, and the Saint Nicholas,—that’s named for me. But I’m not old enough to have a venture yet. Father says I shall some day.”
The Pool of the Thames was crowded, and as the wind freshened the ships looked even more like huge white-winged birds. Around them sailed and wheeled and fluttered the real sea-birds, picking up their living from the scraps thrown overboard,—swans, gulls, wild geese and ducks, here and there a strange bird lured to the harbor by hope of spoil. The oddly mated companions, the man and the boy, walked along busy Thames Street and came to Tower Hill and the great gray fortress-towers, with a double line of wall coiled around the base, just outside the City of London. The deep wide moat fed from the river made an island for the group of buildings with the square White Tower in the middle.
“None of your friends live there, I suppose?” the young man inquired, and Nicholas smiled rather dubiously, for he was not certain whether it was a joke or not. The Tower had been prison, palace and fort by turns, but common criminals were not imprisoned there—only those who had been accused of crimes against the State. “Lucky you,” the youth added. “London is much pleasanter as a residence, I assure you. I lodged not far from here when I first came, but now I lodge——”
That sentence was never finished. Clattering down Tower Hill came a troop of horse, and one, swerving suddenly, caught Nicholas between his heels and the wall, and by the time the rider had his animal under control the little fellow was lying senseless in the arms of the stranger, who had dived in among the flying hoofs and dragged him clear. The rider, lagging behind the rest, looked hard at the two, and then spurred on without even stopping to ask whether he had hurt the boy.
Before Nicholas had fairly come to himself he shut his teeth hard to keep from crying out with the pain in his side and left leg. The young man had laid him carefully down close by the wall, and just as he was looking about for help three of the troopers came spurring back, dismounted, and pressed close around the youth as one of them said something in French. He straightened up and looked at them, and in spite of his pain Nicholas could not help noticing that he looked proudly and straightforwardly, as if he were a gentleman born. He answered them in the same language; they shook their heads and made gruff, short answers. The young man laid his hand on his dagger, hesitated, and turned back to Nicholas.
“Little lad,” he said, “this is indeed bad fortune. They will not let me take you home, but——” So deftly that the action was hidden from the men who stood by, he closed Nicholas’ hand over a small packet, while apparently he was only searching for a coin in his pouch and beckoning to a respectable-looking market-woman who halted near by just then. He added in a quick low tone without looking at the boy, “Keep it for me and say nothing.”
Nicholas nodded and slipped the packet into the breast of his doublet, with a groan which was very real, for it hurt him to move that arm. The young man rose and as his captors laid heavy hands upon him he put some silver in the woman’s hand, saying persuasively, “This boy has been badly hurt. I know not who he is, but see that he gets home safely.”
“Aye, master,” said the woman compassionately, and then everything grew black once more before Nicholas’ eyes as he tried to see where the men were going. When he came to himself they were gone, and he told the woman that he was Nicholas Gay and that his father was Gilbert Gay, in Fenchurch Street. The woman knew the house, which was tile-roofed and three-storied, and had a garden; she called a porter and sent him for a hurdle, and they got Nicholas home.
The merchant and his wife were seriously disturbed over the accident,—not only because the boy was hurt, and hurt in so cruel a way, but because some political plot or other seemed to be mixed up in it. From what the market-woman said it looked as if the men might have been officers of the law, and it was her guess that the young man was an Italian spy. Whatever he was, he had been taken in at the gates of the Tower. In a city of less than fifty thousand people, all sorts of gossip is rife about one faction and another, and if Gilbert Gay came to be suspected by any of the King’s advisers there were plenty of jealous folk ready to make trouble for him and his. Time went by, however, and they heard nothing more of it.