Having got within the fortifications of the Tower, the Scottish knights were astonished with the immense army of the minions of luxury who filled its courts. The King himself signified his pleasure to Sir David Lindsay and his friends that they should enter the Royal apartments, where they partook of wine and spices, handed about in rich golden cups; after which a banquet followed in a style of magnificence calculated to make everything they had before seen to be altogether forgotten in comparison with it. The King honoured them with his peculiar attention, and even deigned to attend to making provision for their proper accommodation. For this purpose, he called for the Lord Welles, and gave him a list of those persons who were to be honoured with the expense of lodging and entertaining these strangers and their people. With singular contradiction to his own wish that they should be treated with exemplary hospitality, he chose to select as their hosts certain persons who had offended him, and whom he had a desire to punish, by thus exposing them to great expense; and so the strangers were thrown into situations where anything but voluntary kindness might be looked for. [[491]]
When the King gave them their leave, they found their esquires in waiting for them. Mortimer Sang led Hepborne into the Vintry, to the house of a certain Lawrence Ratcliffe, a wine merchant. His dwelling was within a gateway and courtyard, on each side of which there were long rows of warehouses and vaults extending nearly quite down to the river wall.
It was dark when Sir Patrick entered the court-yard, and as he passed onwards to where he saw a lamp burning within the doorway of the dwelling house, he heard the voice of a man issuing from an outbuilding.
“Jehan Petit,” said the person, who spoke to some one who followed him, “see that thou dost give out no wine to this Scot but of that cargo, the which did ship the sea water, and that tastes brackish. An the King will make us maintain all his strange cattle, by St. Paul, but as far as I have to do with them they shall content themselves with such feeding as it may please me to bestow. Let the esquire and the other trash have sour ale, ’tis good enow for the knaves; and I promise thee it will well enow match the rest of their fare, and the herborow they shall have. Alas, poor England! ay, and above all, alas, poor London! for an we have not a change soon, we shall be eaten up by the King’s cormorants—a plague rot ’em!”
By this time Hepborne and his landlord met in the stream of light that issued from the open doorway. Hepborne made a courteous though dignified obeisance to Master Ratcliffe, a stout elderly man, whose face showed that he had not been at all negligent during his life in tasting, that he might have personal knowledge of what was really good before he ventured to give it to his friends. The wine merchant was taken somewhat unawares. He had made up his mind to be as cross and as rude as he well could to the guest that had been thus forced upon him. But Hepborne’s polite deportment commanded a return from a man who had been in France, and he bent to the stranger with a much better grace than he could have wished to have bestowed on him.
“I do address myself to Master Lawrence Ratcliffe, if I err not?” said Hepborne, in a civil tone.
“Yea, I am that man,” replied the other, recovering something of his sulky humour.
“Master Ratcliffe,” said Hepborne, with great civility of manner, “I understand that His Majesty the King of England’s hospitality to strangers hath been the cause of throwing me to thy lot. But I cannot suffer his kindness to a Scottish knight to do injury to a worthy citizen of his own good city of [[492]]London. To keep me and my people in thy house, would run thee into much trouble, not to talk of the expense, the which no man of trade can well bear. I come, therefore, to entreat thee to permit me to rid thee and thy house of unbidden guests, who cannot choose but give thee great annoy, and to crave thine advice as to what inn or hostel I should find it most convenient to remove to. By granting me this, thou wilt make me much beholden to thee.”
Master Lawrence Ratcliffe looked at Hepborne with no small astonishment. This was a sort of behaviour to which he had been but little used, and for which he was by no means prepared.
“Nay, by St. Stephen, Sir Knight, thou shalt not move,” said he at last; “by all the blessed saints, thou shalt have the best bed and the best food that London can furnish; yea, and wine, too, the which let me tell thee, the King himself cannot command. Go, get the key of the trap cellar, Jehan Petit,” said he, turning briskly to his attendant; “bring up some flasks of the right Bourdeaux and Malvoisie. Thou dost well know their marks, I wot.”