The Armourer's Prentices, Charlotte Mary Yonge [christmas read aloud TXT] 📗

place where they could breathe, and stood still a moment to recover from the struggle, and vituperate the hot water.

Then they heard fresh howls and yells in front as well as behind.

"They are at it everywhere," exclaimed Stephen. "I hear them somewhere out by Cornhill."

"Ay, where the Frenchmen live that calender worsted," returned Giles. "Come on; who knows how it is with the old man and little maid?"

"There's a sort in our court that are ready for aught," said Ambrose.

On they hurried in the darkness, which was now at the very deepest of the night; now and then a torch was borne across the street, and most of the houses had lights in the upper windows, for few Londoners slept on that strange night. The stained glass of the windows of the Churches beamed in bright colours from the Altar lights seen through them, but the lads made slower progress than they wished, for the streets were never easy to walk in the dark, and twice they came on mobs assailing houses, from the windows of one of which, French shoes and boots were being hailed down. Things were moderately quiet around St. Paul's, but as they came into Warwick Lane they heard fresh shouts and wild cries, and at the archway heading to the inner yard they could see that there was a huge bonfire in the midst of the court--of what composed they could not see for the howling figures that exulted round it.

"George Bates, the villain!" cried Stephen, as his enemy in exulting ferocious delight was revealed for a moment throwing a book on the fire, and shouting, "Hurrah! there's for the old sorcerer, there's for the heretics!"

That instant Giles was flying on Bates, and Stephen, with equal, if not greater fury, at one of his comrades; but Ambrose dashed through the outskirts of the wildly screaming and shouting fellows, many of whom were the miscreant population of the mews, to the black yawning doorway of his master. He saw only a fellow staggering out with the screw of the press to feed the flame, and hurried on in the din to call "Master, art thou there?"

There was no answer, and he moved on to the next door, calling again softly, while all the spoilers seemed absorbed in the fire and the combat. "Master Michael! 'Tis I, Ambrose!"

"Here, my son," cautiously answered a voice he knew for Lucas Hansen's.

"Oh, master! master!" was his low, heart-stricken cry, as by the leaping light of a flame he saw the pale face of the old printer, who drew him in.

"Yea! 'tis ruin, my son," said Lucas. "And would that that were the worst."

The light flashed and flickered through the broken window so that Ambrose saw that the hangings had been torn down and everything wrecked, and a low sound as of stifled weeping directed his eyes to a corner where Aldonza sat with her father's head on her lap. "Lives he? Is he greatly hurt?" asked Ambrose, awe-stricken.

"The life is yet in him, but I fear me greatly it is passing fast," said Lucas, in a low voice. "One of those lads smote him on the back with a club, and struck him down at the poor maid's feet, nor hath he moved since. It was that one young Headley is fighting with," he added.

"Bates! ah! Would that we had come sooner! What! more of this work--"

For just then a tremendous outcry broke forth, and there was a rush and panic among those who had been leaping round the fire just before. "The guard!--the King's men!" was the sound they presently distinguished. They could hear rough abusive voices, shrieks and trampling of feet. A few seconds more and all was still, only the fire remained, and in the stillness the suppressed sobs and moans of Aldonza were heard.

"A light! Fetch a light from the fire!" said Lucas.

Ambrose ran out. The flame was lessening, but he could see the dark bindings, and the blackened pages of the books he loved so well. A corner of a page of St. Augustine's Confessions was turned towards him and lay on a singed fragment of Aldonza's embroidered curtain, while a little red flame was licking the spiral folds of the screw, trying, as it were, to gather energy to do more than blacken it. Ambrose could have wept over it at any other moment, but now he could only catch up a brand--it was the leg of his master's carved chair--and run back with it. Lucas ventured to light a lamp, and they could then see the old man's face pale, but calm and still, with his long white beard flowing over his breast. There was no blood, no look of pain, only a set look about the eyes; and Aldonza cried "Oh, father, thou art better! Speak to me! Let Master Lucas lift thee up!"

"Nay, my child. I cannot move hand or foot. Let me be thus till the Angel of Death come for me. He is very near." He spoke in short sentences. "Water--nay--no pain," he added then, and Ambrose ran for some water in the first battered fragment of a tin pot he could find. They bathed his face and he gathered strength after a time to say "A priest!--oh for a priest to shrive and housel me."

"I will find one," said Ambrose, speeding out into the court over fragments of the beautiful work for which Abenali was hated, and over the torn, half-burnt leaves of the beloved store of Lucas. The fire had died down, but morning twilight was beginning to dawn, and all was perfectly still after the recent tumult, though for a moment or two Ambrose heard some distant cries.

Where should he go? Priests indeed were plentiful, but both his friends were in bad odour with the ordinary ones. Lucas had avoided both the Lenten shrift and Easter Communion, and what Miguel might have done, Ambrose was uncertain. Some young priests had actually been among the foremost in sacking the dwellings of the unfortunate foreigners, and Ambrose was quite uncertain whether he might not fall on one of that stamp--or on one who might vex the old man's soul--perhaps deny him the Sacraments altogether. As he saw the pale lighted windows of St. Paul's, it struck him to see whether any one were within. The light might be only from some of the tapers burning perpetually, but the pale light in the north-east, the morning chill, and the clock striking three, reminded him that it must be the hour of Prime, and he said to himself, "Sure, if a priest be worshipping at this hour, he will be a good and merciful man. I can but try."

The door of the transept yielded to his hand. He came forward, lighted through the darkness by the gleam of the candles, which cast a huge and awful shadow from the crucifix of the rood-screen upon the pavement. Before it knelt a black figure in prayer. Ambrose advanced in some awe and doubt how to break in on these devotions, but the priest had heard his step, rose and said, "What is it, my son? Dost thou seek sanctuary after these sad doings?"

"Nay, reverend sir," said Ambrose. "'Tis a priest for a dying man I seek;" and in reply to the instant question, where it was, he explained in haste who the sufferer was, and how he had received a fatal blow, and was begging for the Sacraments. "And oh, sir!" he added, "he is a holy and God-fearing man, if ever one lived, and hath been cruelly and foully entreated by jealous and wicked folk, who hated him for his skill and industry."

"Alack for the unhappy lads; and alack for those who egged them on," said the priest. "Truly they knew not what they did. I will come with thee, my good youth. Thou hast not been one of them?"

"No, truly sir, save that I was carried along and could not break from the throng. I work for Lucas Hansen, the Dutch printer, whom they have likewise plundered in their savage rage."

"'Tis well. Thou canst then bear this," said the priest, taking a thick wax candle. Then reverently advancing to the Altar, whence he took the pyx, or gold case in which the Host was reserved, he lighted the candle, which he gave, together with his stole, to the youth to bear before him.

Then, when the light fell full on his features, Ambrose with a strange thrill of joy and trust perceived that it was no other than Dean Colet, who had here been praying against the fury of the people. He was very thankful, feeling intuitively that there was no fear but that Abenali would be understood, and for his own part, the very contact with the man whom he revered seemed to calm and soothe him, though on that solemn errand no word could be spoken. Ambrose went on slowly before, his dark head uncovered, the priestly stole hanging over his arm, his hands holding aloft the tall candle of virgin wax, while the Dean followed closely with feeble steps, looking frail and worn, but with a grave, sweet solemnity on his face. It was a perfectly still morning, and as they slowly paced along, the flame burnt steadily with little flickering, while the pure, delicately-coloured sky overhead was becoming every moment lighter, and only the larger stars were visible. The houses were absolutely still, and the only person they met, a lad creeping homewards after the fray, fell on his knees bareheaded as he perceived their errand. Once or twice again sounds came up from the city beneath, like shrieks or wailing breaking strangely on that fair peaceful May morn; but still that pair went on till Ambrose had guided the Dean to the yard, where, except that the daylight was revealing more and more of the wreck around, all was as he had left it. Aldonza, poor child, with her black hair hanging loose like a veil, for she had been startled from her bed, still sat on the ground making her lap a pillow for the white-bearded head, nobler and more venerable than ever. On it lay, in the absolute immobility produced by the paralysing blow, the fine features already in the solemn grandeur of death, and only the movement of the lips under the white flowing beard and of the dark eyes showing life.

Dean Colet said afterwards that he felt as if he had been called to the death-bed of Israel, or of Barzillai the Gileadite, especially when the old man, in the Oriental phraseology he had never entirely lost, said, "I thank Thee, my God, and the God of my fathers, that Thou hast granted me that which I had prayed for."

The Dutch printer was already slightly known to the Dean, having sold him many books. A few words were exchanged with him, but it was plain that the dying man could not be moved, and that his confession must he made on the lap of the young girl. Colet knelt over him so as to be able to hear, while Lucas and Ambrose withdraw, but were soon called back for the remainder of the service for the dying. The old man's face showed perfect peace. All worldly