“Be careful that you are not too simple. Now, in your ear, John, I have many fears for that fine gentleman, your father. He is dabbling his hands in dangerous dishes. God knows what will come of all this ferment. The Protestant pot is on the bubble, John; it will boil over and scald a good many people, or I know nothing.”
“How much of it is froth?”
“Perhaps on the top, sir; but there is a deuced lot of hot liquor underneath. I know more of these things than most men, John; I am in and out, here, there, and everywhere; I keep my ears open, my clacker quiet, and my opinions to myself. There are some people who must be forever meddling, and banking up secret bonfires under their own houses. The papists are just such folk, John. There will be a flare soon, I tell you, and a bigger flare, perhaps, than the Great Fire ever made. Keep your fingers to yourself, John, and let fools play with hot coals.”
John Gore listened to Mr. Pepys’s prophecies, and watched the autumn woods flow by, russet and green, and bronze and gold. They were riding now over the Sussex hills, with a gorgeous landscape flowing toward the sea. Blue distances, far, faint horizons, dim, winding valleys ablaze with the splendor of decay. Leaves falling with a flicker of amber in the autumn sunlight. Berries red upon the bryony and the brier. Bracken bronzing the woodlands and the hill-sides, vague mists ready to rise so soon as the sun had set.
It was late in the afternoon, and the west a sweep of cold clear gold, when they came to the town of Battle, riding over the hill where the windmills stood, the hill called Mountjoy in those parts, for there the knights of William the Norman had tossed their spears in triumph as the sun went down. Coming by Mill Street into King Street they saw the great gray gate of the Abbey facing the town green where the fairs were held and where they baited bulls. Looking about them for a good inn, they chose “The Half Moon,” on the eastern side of the green. Over the way stood the great beamed house where wayfarers had been lodged before the days of the Abbey’s death.
The first piece of news Mr. Pepys had from the hostler as he dismounted was that my Lord Montague was not at the Abbey, but was expected from Cowdray some day that week. Mr. Pepys swore by way of protest, being stiff and hungry, and inclined to be choleric and testy over trifles. He was walking to and fro in the yard to stretch his legs, and throwing caustic brevities toward John Gore, when a neat and comely woman of forty came stepping over the stones, and desired to know how she could make the gentlemen welcome.
Mr. Pepys looked at her bland, brown face, with plaits of dark hair drawn over the forehead, and recovered some of his urbanity.
“Your best bedroom, ma’am, the best supper you can serve, and the best bottle of wine you have. You may not know Mr. Pepys of the Admiralty in these parts.”
The landlady spread her apron and curtesied very prettily, her brown eyes and the red handkerchief over her bosom making Mr. Pepys approve of her manners.
“The great Mr. Samuel Pepys, sir?”