The Armourer's Prentices

“Winchester must be nigh.  The sun is getting low,” said Stephen.

“We will ask.  The good folk will at least give us an answer,” said Ambrose wearily.

As they reached the gate, a team of plough horses was passing in led by a peasant lad, while a lay brother, with his gown tucked up, rode sideways on one, whistling.  An Augustinian monk, ruddy, burly, and sunburnt, stood in the farm-yard, to receive an account of the day’s work, and doffing his cap, Ambrose asked whether Winchester were near.

“Three mile or thereaway, my good lad,” said the monk; “thou’lt see the towers an ye mount the hill.  Whence art thou?” he added, looking at the two young strangers.  “Scholars?  The College elects not yet a while.”

“We be from the Forest, so please your reverence, and are bound for Hyde Abbey, where our uncle, Master Richard Birkenholt, dwells.”

“And oh, sir,” added Stephen, “may we crave a drop of water for our dog?”

The monk smiled as he looked at Spring, who had flung himself down to take advantage of the halt, hanging out his tongue, and panting spasmodically.  “A noble beast,” he said, “of the Windsor breed, is’t not?”  Then laying his hand on the graceful head, “Poor old hound, thou art o’er travelled.  He is aged for such a journey, if you came from the Forest since morn.  Twelve years at the least, I should say, by his muzzle.”

“Your reverence is right,” said Stephen, “he is twelve years old.  He is two years younger than I am, and my father gave him to me when he was a little whelp.”

“So thou must needs take him to seek thy fortune with thee,” said the good-natured Augustinian, not knowing how truly he spoke.  “Come in, my lads, here’s a drink for him.  What said you was your uncle’s name?” and as Ambrose repeated it, “Birkenholt!  Living on a corrody at Hyde!  Ay! ay!  My lads, I have a call to Winchester to-morrow, you’d best tarry the night here at Silkstede Grange, and fare forward with me.”

The tired boys were heartily glad to accept the invitation, more especially as Spring, happy as he was with the trough of water before him, seemed almost too tired to stand over it, and after the first, tried to lap, lying down.  Silkstede was not a regular convent, only a grange or farm-house, presided over by one of the monks, with three or four lay brethren under him, and a little colony of hinds, in the surrounding cottages, to cultivate the farm, and tend a few cattle and numerous sheep, the special care of the Augustinians.

Father Shoveller, as the good-natured monk who had received the travellers was called, took them into the spacious but homely chamber which served as refectory, kitchen, and hall.  He called to the lay brother who was busy over the open hearth to fry a few more rashers of bacon; and after they had washed away the dust of their journey at the trough where Spring had slaked his thirst, they sat down with him to a hearty supper, which smacked more of the grange than of the monastery, spread on a large solid oak table, and washed down with good ale.  The repast was shared by the lay brethren and farm servants, and also by two or three big sheep dogs, who had to be taught their manners towards Spring.

There was none of the formality that Ambrose was accustomed to at Beaulieu in the great refectory, where no one spoke, but one of the brethren read aloud some theological book from a stone pulpit in the wall.  Here Brother Shoveller conversed without stint, chiefly with the brother who seemed to be a kind of bailiff, with whom he discussed the sheep that were to be taken into market the next day, and the prices to be given for them by either the college, the castle, or the butchers of Boucher Row.  He however found time to talk to the two guests, and being sprung from a family in the immediate neighbourhood, he knew the verdurer’s name, and ere he was a monk, had joined in the chase in the Forest.

There was a little oratory attached to the hall, where he and the lay brethren kept the hours, to a certain degree, putting two or three services into one, on a liberal interpretation of laborare est orare.  Ambrose’s responses made their host observe as they went out, “Thou hast thy Latin pat, my son, there’s the making of a scholar in thee.”

Then they took their first night’s rest away from home, in a small guest-chamber, with a good bed, though bare in all other respects.  Brother Shoveller likewise had a cell to himself, but the lay brethren slept promiscuously among their sheep-dogs on the floor of the refectory.

All were afoot in the early morning, and Stephen and Ambrose were awakened by the tumultuous bleatings of the flock of sheep that were being driven from their fold to meet their fate at Winchester market.  They heard Brother Shoveller shouting his orders to the shepherds in tones a great deal more like those of a farmer than of a monk, and they made haste to dress themselves and join him as he was muttering a morning abbreviation of his obligatory devotions in the oratory, observing that they might be in time to hear mass at one of the city churches, but the sheep might delay them, and they had best break their fast ere starting.

It was Wednesday, a day usually kept as a moderate fast, so the breakfast was of oatmeal porridge, flavoured with honey, and washed down with mead, after which Brother Shoveller mounted his mule, a sleek creature, whose long ears had an air of great contentment, and rode off, accommodating his pace to that of his young companions up a stony cart-track which soon led them to the top of a chalk down, whence, as in a map, they could see Winchester, surrounded by its walls, lying in a hollow between the smooth green hills.  At one end rose the castle, its fortifications covering its own hill, beneath, in the valley, the long, low massive Cathedral, the college buildings and tower with its pinnacles, and nearer at hand, among the trees, the Almshouse of Noble Poverty at St. Cross, beneath the round hill of St. Catherine.  Churches and monastic buildings stood thickly in the town, and indeed, Brother Shoveller said, shaking his head, that there were well-nigh as many churches as folk to go to them; the place was decayed since the time he remembered when Prince Arthur was born there.  Hyde Abbey he could not show them, from where they stood, as it lay further off by the river side, having been removed from the neighbourhood of the Minster, because the brethren of St. Grimbald could not agree with those of St. Swithun’s belonging to the Minster, as indeed their buildings were so close together that it was hardly possible to pass between them, and their bells jangled in each other’s ears.

Brother Shoveller did not seem to entertain a very high opinion of the monks of St. Grimbald, and he asked the boys whether they were expected there.  “No,” they said; “tidings of their father’s death had been sent by one of the woodmen, and the only answer that had been returned was that Master Richard Birkenholt was ill at ease, but would have masses said for his brother’s soul.”

“Hem!” said the Augustinian ominously; but at that moment they came up with the sheep, and his attention was wholly absorbed by them, as he joined the lay brothers in directing the shepherds who were driving them across the downs, steering them over the high ground towards the arched West Gate close to the royal castle.  The street sloped rapidly down, and Brother Shoveller conducted his young companions between the overhanging houses, with stalls between serving as shops, till they reached the open space round the Market Cross, on the steps of which women sat with baskets of eggs, butter, and poultry, raised above the motley throng of cattle and sheep, with their dogs and drivers, the various cries of man and beast forming an incongruous accompaniment to the bells of the churches that surrounded the market-place.

Citizens’ wives in hood and wimple were there, shrilly bargaining for provision for their households, squires and grooms in quest of hay for their masters’ stables, purveyors seeking food for the garrison, lay brethren and sisters for their convents, and withal, the usual margin of begging friars, wandering gleemen, jugglers and pedlars, though in no great numbers, as this was only a Wednesday market-day, not a fair.  Ambrose recognised one or two who made part of the crowd at Beaulieu only two days previously, when he had “seen through tears the juggler leap,” and the jingling tune one of them was playing on a rebeck brought back associations of almost unbearable pain.  Happily, Father Shoveller, having seen his sheep safely bestowed in a pen, bethought him of bidding the lay brother in attendance show the young gentlemen the way to Hyde Abbey, and turning up a street at right angles to the principal one, they were soon out of the throng.

It was a lonely place, with a decayed uninhabited appearance, and Brother Peter told them it had been the Jewry, whence good King Edward had banished all the unbelieving dogs of Jews, and where no one chose to dwell after them.

Soon they came in sight of a large extent of monastic buildings, partly of stone, but the more domestic offices of flint and brick or mortar.  Large meadows stretched away to the banks of the Itchen, with cattle grazing in them, but in one was a set of figures to whom the lay brother pointed with a laugh of exulting censure.

“Long bows!” exclaimed Stephen.  “Who be they?”

“Brethren of St. Grimbald, sir.  Such rule doth my Lord of Hyde keep, mitred abbot though he be.  They say the good bishop hath called him to order, but what recks he of bishops?  Good-day, Brother Bulpett, here be two young kinsmen of Master Birkenholt to visit him; and so benedicite, fair sirs.  St. Austin’s grace be with you!”

Through a gate between two little red octagonal towers, Brother Bulpett led the two visitors, and called to another of the monks, “Benedicite, Father Segrim, here be two striplings wanting speech of old Birkenholt.”

“Looking after dead men’s shoes, I trow,” muttered father Segrim, with a sour look at the lads, as he led them through the outer court, where some fine horses were being groomed, and then across a second court surrounded with a beautiful cloister, with flower beds in front of it.  Here, on a stone bench, in the sun, clad in a gown furred with rabbit skin, sat a decrepit old man, both his hands clasped over his staff.  Into his deaf ears their guide shouted, “These boys say they are your kindred, Master Birkenholt.”

“Anan?” said the old man, trembling with palsy.  The lads knew him to be older than their father, but they were taken by surprise at such feebleness, and the monk did not aid them, only saying roughly, “There he is.  Tell your errand.”

“How fares it with you, uncle?” ventured Ambrose.

“Who be ye?  I know none of you,” muttered the old man, shaking his head still more.

“We are Ambrose and Stephen from the Forest,” shouted Ambrose.

“Ah!  Steve! poor Stevie!  The accursed boar has rent his goodly face so as I would never have known him.  Poor Steve!  Best his soul!”

The old man began to weep, while his nephews recollected that they had heard that another uncle had been slain by the tusk of a wild boar in early manhood.  Then to their surprise, his eyes fell on Spring, and calling the hound by name, he caressed the creature’s head—“Spring, poor Spring!  Stevie’s faithful old dog.  Hast lost thy master?  Wilt follow me now?”

He was thinking of a Spring as well as of a Stevie of sixty years ago, and he babbled on of how many fawns were in the Queen’s Bower this summer, and who had best shot at the butts at Lyndhurst, as if he were excited by the breath of his native Forest, but there was no making him understand that he was speaking with his nephews.  The name of his brother John only set him repeating that John loved the greenwood, and would be content to take poor Stevie’s place and dwell in the verdurer’s lodge; but that he himself ought to be abroad, he had seen brave Lord Talbot’s ships ready at Southampton, John might stay at home, but he would win fame and honour in Gascony.

And while he thus wandered, and the boys stood by perplexed and distressed, Brother Segrim came back, and said, “So, young sirs, have you seen enough of your doting kinsman?  The sub-prior bids me say that we harbour no strange, idling, lubber lads nor strange dogs here.  ’Tis enough for us to be saddled with dissolute old men-at-arms without all their idle kin making an excuse to come and pay their devoirs.  These corrodies are a heavy charge and a weighty abuse, and if there be the visitation the king’s majesty speaks of, they will be one of the first matters to be amended.”

Wherewith Stephen and Ambrose found themselves walked out of the cloister of St. Grimbald, and the gates shut behind them.

CHAPTER III

KINSMEN AND STRANGERS

“The reul of St. Maure and of St. Beneit
Because that it was old and some deale streit
This ilke monk let old things pace;
He held ever of the new world the trace.”

    Chaucer.
“The churls!” exclaimed Stephen.

“Poor old man!” said Ambrose; “I hope they are good to him!”

“To think that thus ends all that once was gallant talk of fighting under Talbot’s banner,” sighed Stephen, thoughtful for a moment.  “However, there’s a good deal to come first.”

“Yea, and what next?” said the elder brother.

“On to uncle Hal.  I ever looked most to him.  He will purvey me to a page’s place in some noble household, and get thee a clerk’s or scholar’s place in my Lord of York’s house.  Mayhap there will be room for us both there, for my Lord of York hath a goodly following of armed men.”

“Which way lies the road to London?”

“We must back into the town and ask, as well as fill our stomachs and our wallets,” said Ambrose.  “Talk of their rule!  The entertaining of strangers is better understood at Silkstede than at Hyde.”

“Tush!  A grudged crust sticks in the gullet,” returned Stephen.  “Come on, Ambrose, I marked the sign of the White Hart by the market-place.  There will be a welcome there for foresters.”

They returned on their steps past the dilapidated buildings of the old Jewry, and presently saw the market in full activity; but the sounds and sights of busy life where they were utter strangers, gave Ambrose a sense of loneliness and desertion, and his heart sank as the bolder Stephen threaded the way in the direction of a broad entry over which stood a slender-bodied hart with gold hoofs, horns, collar, and chain.

“How now, my sons?” said a full cheery voice, and to their joy, they found themselves pushed up against Father Shoveller.

“Returned already!  Did you get scant welcome at Hyde?  Here, come where we can get a free breath, and tell me.”