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

nails and rivets. What wilt thou say to me for such a piece of stitchery?"

"Say, pretty mistress? Why this!" quoth the giant, and he picked her up by the slim waist in his great hands, and kissed her on the forehead. He had done the like many a time nine or ten years ago, and though Master Headley laughed, Dennet was not one bit embarrassed, and turned to the next traveller. "Thou art no more a prentice, Giles, and canst wear this in thy bonnet," she said, holding out to him a short silver chain and medal of St. George and the Dragon.

"Thanks, gentle maid," said Giles, taking the handsome gift a little sheepishly. "My bonnet will make a fair show," and he bent down as she stood on the step, and saluted her lips, then began eagerly fastening the chain round his cap, as one delighted with the ornament.

Stephen was some distance off. He had turned aside when she spoke to Giles, and was asking of Tibble last instructions about the restoration of enamel, when he felt a touch on his arm, and saw Dennet standing by him. She looked up in his face, and held up a crimson silken purse, with S. B embroidered on it with a wreath of oak and holly leaves.

With the air that ever showed his gentle blood, Stephen put a knee to the ground, and kissed the fingers that held it to him, whereupon Dennet, a sudden burning blush overspreading her face under her little pointed hood, turned suddenly round and ran into the house. She was out again on the steps when the waggon finally got under weigh, and as her eyes met Stephen's, he doffed his flat cap with one hand, and laid the other on his heart, so that she knew where her purse had taken up its abode.

Of the Field of the Cloth of Gold not much need be said. To the end of the lives of the spectators, it was a tale of wonder. Indeed without that, the very sight of the pavilions was a marvel in itself, the blue dome of Francis spangled in imitation of the sky, with sun, moon, and stars; and the feudal castle of Henry, a three months' work, each surrounded with tents of every colour and pattern which fancy could devise, with the owners' banners or pennons floating from the summits, and every creature, man, and horse, within the enchanted precincts, equally gorgeous. It was the brightest and the last full display of magnificent pseudo chivalry, and to Stephen's dazzled eye, seeing it beneath the slant rays of the setting sun of June, it was a fairy tale come to life. Hal Randall, who was in attendance on the Cardinal, declared that it was a mere surfeit of jewels and gold and silver, and that a frieze jerkin or leathern coat was an absolute refreshment to the sight. He therefore spent all the time he was off duty in the forge far in the rear, where Smallbones and his party had very little but hard work, mending, whetting, furbishing, and even changing devices. Those six days of tilting when "every man that stood, showed like a mine," kept the armourers in full occupation night and day, and only now and then could the youths try to make their way to some spot whence they could see the tournament.

Smallbones was more excited by the report of fountains of good red and white wines of all sorts, flowing perpetually in the court of King Henry's splended mock castle; but fortunately one gulp was enough for an English palate nurtured on ale and mead, and he was disgusted at the heaps of country folk, men-at-arms, beggars and vagabonds of all kinds, who swilled the liquor continually, and, in loathsome contrast to the external splendours, lay wallowing on the ground so thickly that it was sometimes hardly possible to move without treading on them.

"I stumbled over a dozen," said the jester, as he strolled into the little staked inclosure that the Dragon party had arranged round their tent for the prosecution of their labours, which were too important to all the champions not to be respected. "Lance and sword have not laid so many low in the lists as have the doughty Baron Burgundy and the heady knight Messire Sherris Sack."

"Villain Verjuice and Varlet Vinegar is what Kit there calls them," said Stephen, looking up from the work he was carrying on over a pan of glowing charcoal.

"Yea," said Smallbones, intermitting his noisy operations, "and the more of swine be they that gorge themselves on it. I told Jack and Hob that 'twould be shame for English folk to drown themselves like French frogs or Flemish hogs."

"Hogs!" returned Randall. "A decent Hampshire hog would scorn to be lodged as many a knight and squire and lady too is now, pigging it in styes and hovels and haylofts by night, and pranking it by day with the best!"

"Sooth enough," said Smallbones. "Yea, we have had two knights and their squires beseeching us for leave to sleep under our waggon! Not an angel had they got among the four of them either, having all their year's income on their backs, and more too. I trow they and their heirs will have good cause to remember this same Field of Gold."

"And what be'st thou doing, nevvy?" asked the jester. "Thy trade seems as brisk as though red blood were flowing instead of red wine."

"I am doing my part towards making the King into Hercules," said Stephen, "though verily the tailor hath more part therein than we have; but he must needs have a breastplate of scales of gold, and that by to-morrow's morn. As Ambrose would say, 'if he will be a pagan god, he should have what's-his-name, the smith of the gods, to work for him.'"

"I heard of that freak," said the jester. "There be a dozen tailors and all the Queen's tirewomen frizzling up a good piece of cloth of gold for the lion's mane, covering a club with green damask with pricks, cutting out green velvet and gummed silk for his garland! In sooth, these graces have left me so far behind in foolery that I have not a jest left in my pouch! So here I be, while my Lord Cardinal is shut up with Madame d'Angouleme in the castle--the real old castle, mind you--doing the work, leaving the kings and queens to do their own fooling."

"Have you spoken with the French King, Hal?" asked Smallbones, who had become a great crony of his, since the anxieties of May Eve.

"So far as I may when I have no French, and he no English! He is a comely fellow, with a blithe tongue and a merry eye, I warrant you a chanticleer who will lose nought for lack of crowing. He'll crow louder than ever now he hath given our Harry a fall."

"No! hath he?" and Giles, Stephen, and Smallbones, all suspended their work to listen in concern.

"Ay marry, hath he! The two took it into their royal noddles to try a fall, and wrestled together on the grass, when by some ill hap, this same Francis tripped up our Harry, so that he was on the sward for a moment. He was up again forthwith, and in full heart for another round, when all the Frenchmen burst in gabbling; and, though their King was willing to play the match out fairly, they wouldn't let him, and my Lord Cardinal said something about making ill blood, whereat our King laughed and was content to leave it. As I told him, we have given the French falls enough to let them make much of this one."

"I hope he will yet give the mounseer a good shaking," muttered Smallbones.

"How now, Will! Who's that at the door? We are on his grace's work and can touch none other man's were it the King of France himself, or his Constable, who is finer still."

By way of expressing "No admittance except on business," Smallbones kept Will Wherry in charge of the door of his little territory, which having a mud wall on two sides, and a broad brook with quaking banks on a third, had been easily fenced on the fourth, so as to protect tent, waggon, horses, and work from the incursions of idlers. Will however answered, "The gentleman saith he hath kindred here."

"Ay!" and there pushed in, past the lad a tall, lean form, with a gay but soiled short cloak over one shoulder, a suit of worn buff, a cap garnished with a dilapidated black and yellow feather, and a pair of gilt spurs. "If this be as they told me, where Armourer Headley's folk lodge--I have here a sort of a cousin. Yea, yonder's the brave lad who had no qualms at the flash of a good Toledo in a knight's fist. How now, my nevvy! Is not my daughter's nevvy-- mine?"

"Save your knighthood!" said Smallbones. "Who would have looked to see you here, Sir John? Methought you were in the Emperor's service!"

"A stout man-at-arms is of all services," returned Fulford. "I'm here with half Flanders to see this mighty show, and pick up a few more lusty Badgers at this encounter of old comrades. Is old Headley here?"

"Nay, he is safe at home, where I would I were," sighed Kit.

"And you are my young master his nephew, who knew where to purvey me of good steel," added Fulford, shaking Giles's hand. "You are fain, doubtless, you youngsters, to be forth without the old man. Ha! and you've no lack of merry company."

Harry Randall's first impulse had been to look to the right and left for the means of avoiding this encounter, but there was no escape; and he was moreover in most fantastic motley, arrayed in one of the many suits provided for the occasion. It was in imitation of a parrot, brilliant grass-green velvet, touched here and there with scarlet, yellow, or blue. He had been only half disguised on the occasion of Fulford's visit to his wife, and he perceived the start of recognition in the eyes of the Condottiere, so that he knew it would be vain to try to conceal his identity.

"You sought Stephen Birkenholt," he said. "And you've lit on something nearer, if so be you'll acknowledge the paraquito that your Perronel hath mated with."

The Condottiere burst into a roar of laughter so violent that he had to lean against the mud wall, and hold his sides. "Ha, ha! that I should be father-in-law to a fool!" and then he set off again. "That the sober, dainty little wench should have wedded a fool! Ha! ha! ha!"

"Sir," cried Stephen hotly, "I would have you to know that mine uncle here, Master Harry Randall, is a yeoman of good birth, and that he undertook his present part to support your own father and child! Methinks you are the last who should jeer at and insult him!"

"Stephen is right," said Giles. "This is my kinsman's tent, and no man shall say a word against Master Harry Randall therein."

"Well crowed, my young London gamebirds," returned Fulford, coolly. "I meant no disrespect to the gentleman in green. Nay, I am mightily beholden to him for acting his part out and taking on himself that would