The Armourer's Prentices, Charlotte M. Yonge [large screen ebook reader TXT] 📗

“His reverence is taking his after-dinner nap and may not be disturbed,” said the man.

“Then I will wait,” said Ambrose.

The door was shut in his face, but it was the shady side of the court, and he sat down on a bench and waited. After full an hour the door was opened, and the canon, a good-natured looking man, in a square cap, and gown and cassock of the finest cloth, came slowly out. He had evidently heard nothing of the message, and was taken by surprise when Ambrose, doffing his cap and bowing low, gave him the greeting of the Warden of St. Elizabeth’s and the letter.

“Hum! Ha! My good friend—Fielder—I remember him. He was always a scholar. So he hath sent thee here with his commendations. What should I do with all the idle country lads that come up to choke London and feed the plague? Yet stay—that lurdane Bolt is getting intolerably lazy and insolent, and methinks he robs me! What canst do, thou stripling?”

“I can read Latin, sir, and know the Greek alphabeta.”

“Tush! I want no scholar more than enough to serve my mass. Canst sing?”

“Not now; but I hope to do so again.”

“When I rid me of Bolt there—and there’s an office under the sacristan that he might fill as well as another knave—the fellow might do for me well enow as a body servant,” said Mr. Alworthy, speaking to himself. “He would brush my gowns and make my bed, and I might perchance trust him with my marketings, and by and by there might be some office for him when he grew saucy and idle. I’ll prove him on mine old comrade’s word.”

“Sir,” said Ambrose, respectfully, “what I seek for is occasion for study. I had hoped you could speak to the Dean, Dr. John Colet, for some post at his school.”

“Boy,” said Alworthy, “I thought thee no such fool! Why crack thy brains with study when I can show thee a surer path to ease and preferment? But I see thou art too proud to do an old man a service. Thou writst thyself gentleman, forsooth, and high blood will not stoop.”

“Not so, sir,” returned Ambrose, “I would work in any way so I could study the humanities, and hear the Dean preach. Cannot you commend me to his school?”

“Ha!” exclaimed the canon, “this is your sort, is it? I’ll have nought to do with it! Preaching, preaching! Every idle child’s head is agog on preaching nowadays! A plague on it! Why can’t Master Dean leave it to the black friars, whose vocation ’tis, and not cumber us with his sermons for ever, and set every lazy lad thinking he must needs run after them? No, no, my good boy, take my advice. Thou shalt have two good bellyfuls a day, all my cast gowns, and a pair of shoes by the year, with a groat a month if thou wilt keep mine house, bring in my meals, and the like, and by and by, so thou art a good lad, and runst not after these new-fangled preachments which lead but to heresy, and set folk racking their brains about sin and such trash, we’ll get thee shorn and into minor orders, and who knows what good preferment thou mayst not win in due time!”

“Sir, I am beholden to you, but my mind is set on study.”

“What kin art thou to a fool?” cried the minor canon, so startling Ambrose that he had almost answered, and turning to another ecclesiastic whose siesta seemed to have ended about the same time, “Look at this varlet, Brother Cloudesley! Would you believe it? He comes to me with a letter from mine old friend, in consideration of which I offer him that saucy lubber Bolt’s place, a gown of mine own a year, meat and preferment, and, lo you, he tells me all he wants is to study Greek, forsooth, and hear the Dean’s sermons!”

The other canon shook his head in dismay at such arrant folly. “Young stripling, be warned,” he said. “Know what is good for thee. Greek is the tongue of heresy.”

“How may that be, reverend sir,” said Ambrose, “when the holy Apostles and the Fathers spake and wrote in the Greek?”

“Waste not thy time on him, brother,” said Mr. Alworthy. “He will find out his error when his pride and his Greek forsooth have brought him to fire and faggot.”

“Ay! ay!” added Cloudesley. “The Dean with his Dutch friend and his sermons, and his new grammar and accidence, is sowing heretics as thick as groundsel.”

Wherewith the two canons of the old school waddled away, arm in arm, and Bolt put out his head, leered at Ambrose, and bade him shog off, and not come sneaking after other folk’s shoes.

Sooth to say, Ambrose was relieved by his rejection. If he were not to obtain admission in any capacity to St. Paul’s School, he felt more drawn to Tibble’s friend the printer; for the self-seeking luxurious habits into which so many of the beneficed clergy had fallen were repulsive to him, and his whole soul thirsted after that new revelation, as it were, which Colet’s sermon had made to him. Yet the word heresy was terrible and confusing, and a doubt came over him whether he might not be forsaking the right path, and be lured aside by false lights.

He would think it out before he committed himself. Where should he do so in peace? He thought of the great Minster, but the nave was full of a surging multitude, and there was a loud hum of voices proceeding from it, which took from him all inclination to find his way to the quieter and inner portions of the sanctuary.

Then he recollected the little Pardon Church, where he had seen the Dance of Death on the walls; and crossing the burial-ground he entered, and, as he expected, found it empty, since the hours for masses for the dead were now past. He knelt down on a step, repeated the sext office, in warning for which the bells were chiming all round, covering his face with his hands, and thinking himself back to Beaulieu; then, seating himself on a step, leaning against the wall, he tried to think out whether to give himself up to the leadings of the new light that had broken on him, or whether to wrench himself from it. Was this, which seemed to him truth and deliverance, verily the heresy respecting which rumours had come to horrify the country convents? If he had only heard of it from Tibble Wry-mouth, he would have doubted, in spite of its power over him, but he had heard it from a man, wise, good, and high in place, like Dean Colet. Yet to his further perplexity, his uncle had spoken of Colet as jesting at Wolsey’s table. What course should he take? Could he bear to turn away from that which drew his soul so powerfully, and return to the bounds which seem to him to be grown so narrow, but which he was told were safe? Now that Stephen was settled, it was open to him to return to St. Elizabeth’s College, but the young soul within him revolted against the repetition of what had become to him unsatisfying, unless illumined by the brightness he seemed to have glimpsed at.

But Ambrose had gone through much unwonted fatigue of late, and while thus musing he fell asleep, with his head against the wall. He was half wakened by the sound of voices, and presently became aware that two persons were examining the walls, and comparing the paintings with some others, which one of them had evidently seen. If he had known it, it was with the Dance of Death on the bridge of Lucerne.

“I question,” said a voice that Ambrose had heard before, “whether these terrors be wholesome for men’s souls.”

“For priests’ pouches, they be,” said the other, with something of a foreign accent.

“Alack, when shall we see the day when the hope of paradise and dread of purgatory shall be no longer made the tools of priestly gain; and hatred of sin taught to these poor folk, instead of servile dread of punishment.”

“Have a care, my Colet,” answered the yellow bearded foreigner; “thou art already in ill odour with those same men in authority; and though a Dean’s stall be fenced from the episcopal crook, yet there is a rod at Rome which can reach even thither.”

“I tell thee, dear Erasmus, thou art too timid; I were well content to leave house and goods, yea, to go to prison or to death, could I but bring home to one soul, for which Christ died, the truth and hope in every one of those prayers and creeds that our poor folk are taught to patter as a senseless charm.”

“These are strange times,” returned Erasmus. “Methinks yonder phantom, be he skeleton or angel, will have snatched both of us away ere we behold the full issue either of thy preachings, or my Greek Testament, or of our More’s Utopian images. Dost thou not feel as though we were like children who have set some mighty engine in motion, like the great water-wheels in my native home, which, whirled by the flowing streams of time and opinion, may break up the whole foundations, and destroy the oneness of the edifice?”

“It may be so,” returned Colet. “What read we? ‘The net brake’ even in the Master’s sight, while still afloat on the sea. It was only on the shore that the hundred and fifty-three, all good and sound, were drawn to His feet.”

“And,” returned Erasmus, “I see wherefore thou hast made thy children at St. Paul’s one hundred and fifty and three.”

The two friends were passing out. Their latter speeches had scarce been understood by Ambrose, even if he heard them, so full was he of conflicting feelings, now ready to cast himself before their feet, and entreat the Dean to help him to guidance, now withheld by bashfulness, unwillingness to interrupt, and ingenuous shame at appearing like an eavesdropper towards such dignified and venerable personages. Had he obeyed his first impulse, mayhap his career had been made safer and easier for him, but it was while shyness chained his limbs and tongue that the Dean and Erasmus quitted the chapel, and the opportunity of accosting them had slipped away.

Their half comprehended words had however decided him in the part he should take, making him sure that Colet was not controverting the formularies of the Church, but drawing out those meanings which in repetition by rote were well-nigh forgotten. It was as if his course were made clear to him.

He was determined to take the means which most readily presented themselves of hearing Colet; and leaving the chapel, he bent his steps to the Row which his book-loving eye had already marked. Flanking the great Cathedral on the north, was the row of small open stalls devoted to the sale of books, or “objects of devotion,” all so arranged that the open portion might be cleared, and the stock-in-trade locked up if not carried away. Each stall had its own sign, most of them sacred, such as the Lamb and Flag, the Scallop Shell, or some patron saint, but classical emblems were oddly intermixed, such as Minerva’s Ægis, Pegasus, and the Lyre of Apollo. The sellers, some middle-aged men, some lads, stretched out their arms with their wares to attract the passengers in the street, and did not fail to beset Ambrose. The more lively looked at his Lincoln green and shouted verses of ballads at him, fluttering broad sheets with verses on the lamentable fate of Jane Shore, or Fair Rosamond, the same woodcut doing duty for both ladies, without mercy to their beauty. The scholastic judged by his face and step that he was a student, and they flourished at him black-bound copies of Virgilius Maro, and of Tully’s Offices, while others, hoping that he was an incipient clerk, offered breviaries, missals or portuaries, with the Use of St. Paul’s, or of Sarum, or mayhap St. Austin’s Confessions. He made his way along, with his eye diligently heedful of the signs, and at last recognised the Winged Staff, or caduceus of Hermes, over a stall where a couple of boys in blue caps and gowns and yellow stockings were making a purchase of a small, grave-looking, elderly but bright cheeked man, whose yellow hair and beard were getting intermingled with grey. They were evidently those St. Paul’s School boys whom Ambrose envied so much, and as they finished their bargaining and ran away together, Ambrose advanced with a salutation, asked if he did not see Master Lucas Hansen, and gave him the note with the commendations of Tibble Steelman the armourer.

He was answered with a ready