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

“With two and two together tied,
    Through Temple Bar and Strand they go,
To Westminster, there to be tried,
    With ropes about their necks also.”

Ill May Day.

And where was Stephen? Crouching, wretched with hunger, cold, weariness, blows, and what was far worse, sense of humiliation and disgrace, and terror for the future, in a corner of the yard of Newgate—whither the whole set of lads, surprised in Warwick Inner Court by the law students of the Inns of Court, had been driven like so many cattle, at the sword’s point, with no attention or perception that he and Giles had been struggling against the spoilers.

Yet this fact made them all the more forlorn. The others, some forty in number, their companions in misfortune, included most of the Barbican prentices, who were of the Eagle faction, special enemies alike to Abenali and to the Dragon, and these held aloof from Headley and Birkenholt, nay, reviled them for the attack which they declared had caused the general capture.

The two lads of the Dragon had, in no measured terms, denounced the cruelty to the poor old inoffensive man, and were denounced in their turn as friends of the sorcerer. But all were too much exhausted by the night’s work to have spirit for more than a snarling encounter of words, and the only effect was that Giles and Stephen were left isolated in their misery outside the shelter of the handsome arched gateway under which the others congregated.

Newgate had been rebuilt by Whittington out of pity to poor prisoners and captives. It must have been unspeakably dreadful before, for the foulness of the narrow paved court, shut in by strong walls, was something terrible. Tired, spent, and aching all over, and with boyish callousness to dirt, still Giles and Stephen hesitated to sit down, and when at last they could stand no longer, they rested, leaning against one another. Stephen tried to keep up hope by declaring that his master would soon get them released, and Giles alternated between despair, and declarations that he would have justice on those who so treated his father’s son. They dropped asleep—first one and then the other—from sheer exhaustion, waking from time to time to realise that it was no dream, and to feel all the colder and more camped.

By and by there were voices at the gate. Friends were there asking after their own Will, or John, or Thomas, as the case might be. The jailer opened a little wicket-window in the heavy door, and, no doubt for a consideration, passed in food to certain lads whom he called out, but it did not always reach its destination. It was often torn away as by hungry wolves. For though the felons had been let out, when the doors were opened; the new prisoners were not by any means all apprentices. There were watermen, husbandmen, beggars, thieves, among them, attracted by the scent of plunder; and even some of the elder lads had no scruple in snatching the morsel from the younger ones.

Poor little Jasper Hope, a mischievous little curly-headed idle fellow, only thirteen, just apprenticed to his brother the draper, and rushing about with the other youths in the pride of his flat cap, was one of the sufferers. A servant had been at the door, promising that his brother would speedily have him released, and handing in bread and meat, of which he was instantly robbed by George Bates and three or four more big fellows, and sent away reeling and sobbing, under a heavy blow, with all the mischief and play knocked out of him. Stephen and Giles called “Shame!” but were unheeded, and they could only draw the little fellow up to them, and assure him that his brother would soon come for him.

The next call at the gate was Headley and Birkenholt—“Master Headley’s prentices—Be they here?”

And at their answer, not only the window, but the door in the gate was opened, and stooping low to enter, Kit Smallbones came in, and not empty-handed.

“Ay, ay, youngsters,” said he, “I knew how it would be, by what I saw elsewhere, so I came with a fee to open locks. How came ye to get into such plight as this? And poor little Hope too! A fine pass when they put babes in jail.”

“I’m prenticed!” said Jasper, though in a very weak little voice.

“Have you had bite or sup?” asked Kit.

And on their reply, telling how those who had had supplies from home had been treated, Smallbones observed, “Let them try it,” and stood, at all his breadth, guarding the two youths and little Jasper, as they ate, Stephen at first with difficulty, in the faintness and foulness of the place, but then ravenously. Smallbones lectured them on their folly all the time, and made them give an account of the night. He said their master was at the Guildhall taking counsel with the Lord Mayor, and there were reports that it would go hard with the rioters, for murder and plunder had been done in many places, and he especially looked at Giles with pity, and asked how he came to embroil himself with Master Mundy? Still his good-natured face cheered them, and he promised further supplies. He also relieved Stephen’s mind about his brother, telling of his inquiry at the Dragon in the morning. All that day the condition of such of the prisoners as had well-to-do friends was improving. Fathers, brothers, masters, and servants, came in quest of them, bringing food and bedding, and by exorbitant fees to the jailers obtained for them shelter in the gloomy cells. Mothers could not come, for a proclamation had gone out that none were to babble, and men were to keep their wives at home. And though there were more material comforts, prospects were very gloomy. Ambrose came when Kit Smallbones returned with what Mrs. Headley had sent the captives. He looked sad and dazed, and clung to his brother, but said very little, except that they ought to be locked up together, and he really would have been left in Newgate, if Kit had not laid a great hand on his shoulder and almost forced him away.

Master Headley himself arrived with Master Hope in the afternoon. Jasper sprang to his brother, crying, “Simon! Simon! you are come to take me out of this dismal, evil place?” But Master Hope—a tall, handsome, grave young man, who had often been much disturbed by his little brother’s pranks—could only shake his head with tears in his eyes, and, sitting down on the roll of bedding, take him on his knee and try to console him with the hope of liberty in a few days.

He had tried to obtain the boy’s release on the plea of his extreme youth, but the authorities were hotly exasperated, and would hear of no mercy. The whole of the rioters were to be tried three days hence, and there was no doubt that some would be made an example of, the only question was, how many?

Master Headley closely interrogated his own two lads, and was evidently sorely anxious about his namesake, who, he feared, might be recognised by Alderman Mundy and brought forward as a ringleader of the disturbance; nor did he feel at all secure that the plea that he had no enmity to the foreigners, but had actually tried to defend Lucas and Abenali, would be attended to for a moment, though Lucas Hansen had promised to bear witness of it. Giles looked perfectly stunned at the time, unable to take in the idea, but at night Stephen was wakened on the pallet that they shared with little Jasper, by hearing him weeping and sobbing for his mother at Salisbury.

Time lagged on till the 4th of May. Some of the poor boys whiled away their time with dreary games in the yard, sometimes wrestling, but more often gambling with the dice, that one or two happened to possess, for the dinners that were provided for the wealthier, sometimes even betting on what the sentences would be, and who would be hanged, or who escape.

Poor lads, they did not, for the most part, realise their real danger, but Stephen was more and more beset with home-sick longing for the glades and thickets of his native forest, and would keep little Jasper and even Giles for an hour together telling of the woodland adventures of those happy times, shutting his eyes to the grim stone walls, and trying to think himself among the beeches, hollies, cherries, and hawthorns, shining in the May sun! Giles and he were chose friends now, and with little Jasper, said their Paters and Aves together, that they might be delivered from their trouble. At last, on the 4th, the whole of the prisoners were summoned roughly into the court, where harsh-hooking men-at-arms proceeded to bind them together in pairs to be marched through the streets to the Guildhall. Giles and Stephen would naturally have been put together, but poor little Jasper cried out so lamentably, when he was about to be bound to a stranger, that Stephen stepped forward in his stead, begging that the boy might go with Giles. The soldier made a contemptuous sound, but consented, and Stephen found that his companion in misfortune, whose left elbow was tied to his right was George Bates.

The two lads looked at each other in a strange, rueful manner, and Stephen said, “Shake hands, comrade. If we are to die, let us bear no ill-will.”

George gave a cold, limp, trembling hand. He looked wretched, subdued, tearful, and nearly starved, for he had no kinsfolk at hand, and his master was too angry with him, and too much afraid of compromising himself, to have sent him any supplies. Stephen tried to unbutton his own pouch, but not succeeding with his left hand, bade George try with his right. “There’s a cake of bread there,” he said. “Eat that, and thou’lt be able better to stand up like a man, come what will.”

George devoured it eagerly. “Ah!” he said, in a stronger voice, “Stephen Birkenholt, thou art an honest fellow. I