The Prince and the Pauper, Mark Twain [fantasy novels to read .TXT] 📗

know not, good your worship. I saw the youth meddle with them—he

that came for the boy.”

 

“Thousand deaths! ‘Twas done to deceive me—‘tis plain ‘twas done to

gain time. Hark ye! Was that youth alone?”

 

“All alone, your worship.”

 

“Art sure?”

 

“Sure, your worship.”

 

“Collect thy scattered wits—bethink thee—take time, man.”

 

After a moment’s thought, the servant said—

 

“When he came, none came with him; but now I remember me that as the two

stepped into the throng of the Bridge, a ruffian-looking man plunged out

from some near place; and just as he was joining them—”

 

“What THEN?—out with it!” thundered the impatient Hendon, interrupting.

 

“Just then the crowd lapped them up and closed them in, and I saw no

more, being called by my master, who was in a rage because a joint that

the scrivener had ordered was forgot, though I take all the saints to

witness that to blame ME for that miscarriage were like holding the

unborn babe to judgment for sins com—”

 

“Out of my sight, idiot! Thy prating drives me mad! Hold! Whither art

flying? Canst not bide still an instant? Went they toward Southwark?”

 

“Even so, your worship—for, as I said before, as to that detestable

joint, the babe unborn is no whit more blameless than—”

 

“Art here YET! And prating still! Vanish, lest I throttle thee!” The

servitor vanished. Hendon followed after him, passed him, and plunged

down the stairs two steps at a stride, muttering, “‘Tis that scurvy

villain that claimed he was his son. I have lost thee, my poor little

mad master—it is a bitter thought—and I had come to love thee so! No!

by book and bell, NOT lost! Not lost, for I will ransack the land till I

find thee again. Poor child, yonder is his breakfast—and mine, but I

have no hunger now; so, let the rats have it—speed, speed! that is the

word!” As he wormed his swift way through the noisy multitudes upon the

Bridge he several times said to himself—clinging to the thought as if it

were a particularly pleasing one—“He grumbled, but he WENT—he went,

yes, because he thought Miles Hendon asked it, sweet lad—he would ne’er

have done it for another, I know it well.”

 

Chapter XIV. ‘Le Roi est mort—vive le Roi.’

 

Toward daylight of the same morning, Tom Canty stirred out of a heavy

sleep and opened his eyes in the dark. He lay silent a few moments,

trying to analyse his confused thoughts and impressions, and get some

sort of meaning out of them; then suddenly he burst out in a rapturous

but guarded voice—

 

“I see it all, I see it all! Now God be thanked, I am indeed awake at

last! Come, joy! vanish, sorrow! Ho, Nan! Bet! kick off your straw and

hie ye hither to my side, till I do pour into your unbelieving ears the

wildest madcap dream that ever the spirits of night did conjure up to

astonish the soul of man withal! … Ho, Nan, I say! Bet!”

 

A dim form appeared at his side, and a voice said—

 

“Wilt deign to deliver thy commands?”

 

“Commands? … O, woe is me, I know thy voice! Speak thou—who am I?”

 

“Thou? In sooth, yesternight wert thou the Prince of Wales; to-day art

thou my most gracious liege, Edward, King of England.”

 

Tom buried his head among his pillows, murmuring plaintively—

 

“Alack, it was no dream! Go to thy rest, sweet sir—leave me to my

sorrows.”

 

Tom slept again, and after a time he had this pleasant dream. He thought

it was summer, and he was playing, all alone, in the fair meadow called

Goodman’s Fields, when a dwarf only a foot high, with long red whiskers

and a humped back, appeared to him suddenly and said, “Dig by that

stump.” He did so, and found twelve bright new pennies—wonderful

riches! Yet this was not the best of it; for the dwarf said—

 

“I know thee. Thou art a good lad, and a deserving; thy distresses shall

end, for the day of thy reward is come. Dig here every seventh day, and

thou shalt find always the same treasure, twelve bright new pennies.

Tell none—keep the secret.”

 

Then the dwarf vanished, and Tom flew to Offal Court with his prize,

saying to himself, “Every night will I give my father a penny; he will

think I begged it, it will glad his heart, and I shall no more be beaten.

One penny every week the good priest that teacheth me shall have; mother,

Nan, and Bet the other four. We be done with hunger and rags, now, done

with fears and frets and savage usage.”

 

In his dream he reached his sordid home all out of breath, but with eyes

dancing with grateful enthusiasm; cast four of his pennies into his

mother’s lap and cried out—

 

“They are for thee!—all of them, every one!—for thee and Nan and Bet—

and honestly come by, not begged nor stolen!”

 

The happy and astonished mother strained him to her breast and exclaimed—

 

“It waxeth late—may it please your Majesty to rise?”

 

Ah! that was not the answer he was expecting. The dream had snapped

asunder—he was awake.

 

He opened his eyes—the richly clad First Lord of the Bedchamber was

kneeling by his couch. The gladness of the lying dream faded away—the

poor boy recognised that he was still a captive and a king. The room was

filled with courtiers clothed in purple mantles—the mourning colour—and

with noble servants of the monarch. Tom sat up in bed and gazed out from

the heavy silken curtains upon this fine company.

 

The weighty business of dressing began, and one courtier after another

knelt and paid his court and offered to the little King his condolences

upon his heavy loss, whilst the dressing proceeded. In the beginning, a

shirt was taken up by the Chief Equerry in Waiting, who passed it to the

First Lord of the Buckhounds, who passed it to the Second Gentleman of

the Bedchamber, who passed it to the Head Ranger of Windsor Forest, who

passed it to the Third Groom of the Stole, who passed it to the

Chancellor Royal of the Duchy of Lancaster, who passed it to the Master

of the Wardrobe, who passed it to Norroy King-at-Arms, who passed it to

the Constable of the Tower, who passed it to the Chief Steward of the

Household, who passed it to the Hereditary Grand Diaperer, who passed it

to the Lord High Admiral of England, who passed it to the Archbishop of

Canterbury, who passed it to the First Lord of the Bedchamber, who took

what was left of it and put it on Tom. Poor little wondering chap, it

reminded him of passing buckets at a fire.

 

Each garment in its turn had to go through this slow and solemn process;

consequently Tom grew very weary of the ceremony; so weary that he felt

an almost gushing gratefulness when he at last saw his long silken hose

begin the journey down the line and knew that the end of the matter was

drawing near. But he exulted too soon. The First Lord of the Bedchamber

received the hose and was about to encase Tom’s legs in them, when a

sudden flush invaded his face and he hurriedly hustled the things back

into the hands of the Archbishop of Canterbury with an astounded look and

a whispered, “See, my lord!” pointing to a something connected with the

hose. The Archbishop paled, then flushed, and passed the hose to the

Lord High Admiral, whispering, “See, my lord!” The Admiral passed the

hose to the Hereditary Grand Diaperer, and had hardly breath enough in

his body to ejaculate, “See, my lord!” The hose drifted backward along

the line, to the Chief Steward of the Household, the Constable of the

Tower, Norroy King-at-Arms, the Master of the Wardrobe, the Chancellor

Royal of the Duchy of Lancaster, the Third Groom of the Stole, the Head

Ranger of Windsor Forest, the Second Gentleman of the Bedchamber, the

First Lord of the Buckhounds,—accompanied always with that amazed and

frightened “See! see!”—till they finally reached the hands of the Chief

Equerry in Waiting, who gazed a moment, with a pallid face, upon what had

caused all this dismay, then hoarsely whispered, “Body of my life, a tag

gone from a truss-point!—to the Tower with the Head Keeper of the King’s

Hose!”—after which he leaned upon the shoulder of the First Lord of the

Buckhounds to regather his vanished strength whilst fresh hose, without

any damaged strings to them, were brought.

 

But all things must have an end, and so in time Tom Canty was in a

condition to get out of bed. The proper official poured water, the

proper official engineered the washing, the proper official stood by with

a towel, and by-and-by Tom got safely through the purifying stage and was

ready for the services of the Hairdresser-royal. When he at length

emerged from this master’s hands, he was a gracious figure and as pretty

as a girl, in his mantle and trunks of purple satin, and purple-plumed

cap. He now moved in state toward his breakfast-room, through the midst

of the courtly assemblage; and as he passed, these fell back, leaving his

way free, and dropped upon their knees.

 

After breakfast he was conducted, with regal ceremony, attended by his

great officers and his guard of fifty Gentlemen Pensioners bearing gilt

battle-axes, to the throne-room, where he proceeded to transact business

of state. His ‘uncle,’ Lord Hertford, took his stand by the throne, to

assist the royal mind with wise counsel.

 

The body of illustrious men named by the late King as his executors

appeared, to ask Tom’s approval of certain acts of theirs—rather a form,

and yet not wholly a form, since there was no Protector as yet. The

Archbishop of Canterbury made report of the decree of the Council of

Executors concerning the obsequies of his late most illustrious Majesty,

and finished by reading the signatures of the Executors, to wit: the

Archbishop of Canterbury; the Lord Chancellor of England; William Lord

St. John; John Lord Russell; Edward Earl of Hertford; John Viscount

Lisle; Cuthbert Bishop of Durham—

 

Tom was not listening—an earlier clause of the document was puzzling

him. At this point he turned and whispered to Lord Hertford—

 

“What day did he say the burial hath been appointed for?”

 

“The sixteenth of the coming month, my liege.”

 

“‘Tis a strange folly. Will he keep?”

 

Poor chap, he was still new to the customs of royalty; he was used to

seeing the forlorn dead of Offal Court hustled out of the way with a very

different sort of expedition. However, the Lord Hertford set his mind at

rest with a word or two.

 

A secretary of state presented an order of the Council appointing the

morrow at eleven for the reception of the foreign ambassadors, and

desired the King’s assent.

 

Tom turned an inquiring look toward Hertford, who whispered—

 

“Your Majesty will signify consent. They come to testify their royal

masters’ sense of the heavy calamity which hath visited your Grace and

the realm of England.”

 

Tom did as he was bidden. Another secretary began to read a preamble

concerning the expenses of the late King’s household, which had amounted

to 28,000 pounds during the preceding six months—a sum so vast that it

made Tom Canty gasp; he gasped again when the fact appeared that 20,000

pounds of this money was still owing and unpaid; {4} and once more when

it appeared that the King’s coffers were about empty, and his twelve

hundred servants much embarrassed for lack of