Chapter X At the Parchment-Maker’s.
“My life hath been a search for Thee,
’Mid thorns left red with Thy dear blood;
In many a dark Gethsemane
I seemed to stand where Thou hadst stood:
And, scorned in this world’s judgment-place,
At times, through tears, to catch Thy face.”
—ROBERT, EARL LYTTON.
The shadow was falling very low on the sun-dial in a small back yard looking into the fields to the north of Chicken Lane, which crossed the Fleet River, one end abutting upon Lither Lane (running northwards from Holborn) and the other entering Smithfield at its north-western corner. Over the sundial for a moment bent a youth of some twenty years or more, clad in a buff jerkin and working apron. His face was remarkable for the extremely good-humoured expression of the lips, and for the perfect frankness of the clear, honest eyes. Having satisfied himself as to the time of day, he re-entered the house by the back-door, which led him into a low, narrow room, fitted with a long table and sundry benches. Here half-a-dozen men and boys were at work, some engaged in preparing skins for use by scraping off the hair, some arrived at the further stages of straining or bleaching, some at the concluding point of cutting the parallelograms of parchment, the manufacture of which was manifestly their trade.
“Put up work, lads’” said the young man, as he came in, in a tone which showed him, notwithstanding his youth, to be the master. “The ’prentice-lads may be gone. I have more ado yet with Dick and Robin.”
He was obeyed with that alacrity which usually finds its way into the cessation of work more readily than into its commencement, and one of the men, with the three apprentices, shouldered their tools and departed, exchanging “God be wi’ you!” with the rest. When they were gone, and the two men remaining had gathered their tools into baskets, one of them said,—
“Monition to-night, Master?”
“Even so, Dick. Come you both into the kitchen.”
The two men nodded, and followed their master into a small but cheerful kitchen, where a large fire blazed in the wide chimney. In a wooden chair in the chimney corner, propped up by cushions, sat a silver-haired old woman, and a girl in the chimney corner at work, while an elder girl and a middle-aged woman were arranging forms as though some gathering of persons was expected.
“Time, Jack?” said the old woman.
“Aye so, Mother,” returned he cheerily, setting to work with the forms.
He called her mother, for none other had he ever known: but the old woman was really the grandmother of the young man and the girls. The middle-aged woman was their one servant.
“There!” said Jack at length, glancing over the forms when the arrangement was finished. “Me reckoneth those shall be so many as we are like to have need.”
“Who be a-coming, Jack?”
“No more than custom is, Mother—without Will Sterys bring yon friend of his that he spake of t’other night. Very like he may.”
“Who shall he be?”
“I wot not, Mother: only Will said he was one safe to be trusted.”
Before the words were well out of Jack’s lips, a low knock came on the house-door—a peculiar knock; three little taps, a pause, two more.
“Here they come,” said Jack, and darted to the door.
A somewhat motley assemblage dropped in by twos and threes. Here came a lame man on crutches; a blind man led by a girl; two wan, tired-looking women; a very old man, bent nearly double; another woman; a young man in his prime. All, however, had as yet one peculiarity—they were dressed in a style which indicated that many of the good things of this life had not come in their way. There was a pause while they spoke kind greetings to the family and each other: and then, at another low knock, Jack let in first one man, and a minute afterwards, two more. All the guests expected had evidently now arrived, for Jack bolted the door and returned to the kitchen.
The man who came by himself, first of the concluding three, proved to be a monk of the Order of St. Austin: a man of about thirty, spare and active, with keen dark eyes which looked as if they saw every thing at once. Coming in with uplifted hand in the traditional attitude of blessing, and “Christ’s peace be on all here!” he took his stand at a small table, and unfastened from his girdle one of those leather books bound with a projecting end and a knot, for the purpose of being carried in that manner. This he set down on the table, and waited a moment for the other two to appear.
These last arrivals were both wrapped in cloaks, as though they were anxious not to be recognised. The first, throwing his cloak off, showed that he was dressed in livery, in a style peculiar to the latter half of the Middle Ages. He wore a tabard, or loose short coat, something like a smock-frock in shape, but only reaching to the hips; with wide sleeves which ended at the elbow. The right half of this coat was blue; the left half blue and red in stripes, with yellow fleurs-de-lis worked on the blue stripes. On his left arm, just below the shoulder, was embroidered a silver cresset filled with red and yellow flames. In days when every servant bore his master’s badge, and every body knew whose badge it was, no one could doubt for a moment whence this man came. The fiery cresset, borne aloft on the silvered pole, was the familiar badge of the De Holands, Dukes of Exeter.
The second man laid his cloak aside more slowly. But when he did so, he revealed a costume indicating a very high rung on the social ladder. That gold chain and those slashed sleeves marked an esquire at the lowest; the gilt spurs could be worn by none under a knight; and the peculiar cut of the cloak revealed to the initiated that he who bore it must be a peer of the realm. It was no wonder if Jack and his grandmother felt slightly nervous when they discovered that the friend whom Master William Sterys—himself the grandest person they knew—had asked leave to bring, was no other than his noble master, Henry Duke of Exeter.
There was one person in the room, however, who was not in the least affected by the discovery. This was the Austin Friar who was about to conduct the little conventicle. He felt, as one long after him expressed it, that he had always one Hearer of such supreme distinction, that the rank of all the remainder faded into nothingness. Now he said simply, before the others had time to recover themselves,—“Let us pray.”
They knelt down on the brick floor—peer, and parchment-maker, and poor—and the voice of the Austin Friar rose in prayer.
“Lord, Thou art made a refuge to us, from generation to generation!”
Oldest of all Psalms, that has been and will be the Psalm of the wilderness Church for ever. First sung in the desert, there is in it a breathing of desert air, a perpetual reminiscence of those who had no city to dwell in, but who sought one to come. These who prayed it that night were all desert-dwellers: and no one of them felt the journey so weary, or the wilderness air so keen, as that one handsomely robed worshipper with the gold chain about his neck, whom one or two of the poorer ones were almost unconsciously envying, and imagining that he had never breathed the air, nor felt a second’s weariness from the journey.
“His thoughts they scanned not: but I ween
That could their import have been seen,
The meanest groom in all the hall
That e’er tied courser to a stall,
Would scarce have wished to be their prey,
For Lutterward and Fountenay.”46
After the prayer came the monition. There was no singing. The voice of the spiritual singer was silent during the corrupt ages of the Church. Britons and Anglo-Saxons had sung hymns freely: but one after another the voices were hushed, and no new ones rose. Except in her authorised services, and to words chosen by herself, the Church frowned upon sacred music. This was especially remarkable, in an age when the popular love for secular music was at a height to which, in England at least, it has never risen since. It was reserved for Martin Luther to unlock the sealed spring, and let the frozen waters dash downwards in a joyous cataract.
The text was taken from the fifty-fifth Psalm,47 “There is no mutation to them, and they fear not God.” The preacher touched lightly, first, on the changes and chances of this mortal life. In the eyes of inexperienced youth, change is a glad thing, for it is always expected to be for the better, and it accords with that eager restlessness which is the natural feeling of youthful minds. But when middle age is reached, and when men have known trouble, change ceases to be so welcome. It may be good still: we are not so ready to take it for granted that it must be. And when old age is come, or when men have lived through much sorrow, we become afraid of all change, and averse to it. What we desire then is not change and variety; it is rest and peace.
“Brethren,” said the monk in that low, quiet voice of his, which yet was so distinct that it penetrated every corner, “this is a world of change, wherein we ourselves are the most changeable of all things. There is only one Man that changeth not, who is the same to-day, and yesterday, and to all the ages. There is only one Land where is no autumn. Change is not needed there, for all is perfect. But here, no mutation signifieth no betterment. It is the nature of earthly things to become worser: it is the nature of heavenly things to grow fairer, purer, better. And here, were there no worser changes in things around us, there would be no better change in things within us. Nay! but all we be apt to think the very contrary. Oh! saith one, if I had not lost mine having—if I had not lost my children—if I were but better off, with no fear of losing the same, then I would live to God. Brethren, if ye cannot live to God in the place where He has set you, ye will never do the same in the place where you set yourselves.
“Think you, in spiritual things, no change is death. Growth is life. While a plant liveth, it must needs grow and bud and put forth leaves. Let that cease, and what say you at once? The plant is dead.
“Look, I pray you, what the prophet saith of Moab. Quoth he, ‘Moab hath prospered from his youth up, and hath rested on the dregs of him: nor hath he been poured from bowl to bowl, and hath not gone a-journeying: wherefore his taste abideth in him, and his scent is not changed.’48 And what saith God unto His people that had gone far from Him—‘Wherefore should ye be stricken more?’49
“These late years, brethren, have been changeful ones. Verily we have been poured from bowl to bowl. Are we the better for it? How many of us be resting on our dregs? How many of us be choked up, and bringing no fruit to perfection? Fruit, may-be: the plant is not dead; but poor, little, stunted fruits, half blasted before they be grown. Note, I pray you, in that our Lord’s parable which methinks ye know, touching the sower and his seed, He saith the fruit is choked, not only by deceitfulness of riches, but by cares of this life as well. Beware how ye move God to shake you out of slumber! Keep yourselves awake: so shall He not need to wake you with sudden terror. There is scarce a fearfuller passage in all His Word than this: ‘Because I desired to cleanse thee, and thou art not cleansed from thy filthiness, therefore cleansed shalt thou not be, until I have caused Mine indignation to rest upon thee.’50
“But ye whom the Lord hath poured from bowl to bowl, thank Him if the dregs be left behind. This is His purpose, that ye should be partakers of His holiness. Grudge not if ye be poured, even with violence, so long as thereby ye are purified. Look you, the dregs must be got rid of. ‘Blessed are the clean in heart: for they shall see God.’51
“But ere I go further, friends, I must cast up a fence, that ye stray not on wrong paths. Herein is the weakness of mortal man, and of the tongues of men. One emblem showeth but one side of the matter. If we would show all sides, we must have so many emblems as there be sides to show.
“Our Lord saith, ‘Be ye perfect.’52 Yet perfect we cannot be. To the very last day of life, the dregs will be left in the wine so long as it abideth in earthly vessels. There be three kinds of perfectness, brethren: the perfectness of imputation, which is Christ’s work done for us; this we have of Him. ‘Perfect in His comeliness, which He hath put on us.’53 This we have now, on earth. But this is not wrought in us, much less by us: it is wrought for us. The second fashion of perfectness is the perfectness of a sincere heart and a single eye. This we must see to, each man for himself. This it is to which our Lord pointeth us when He saith, Be perfect. This it is which is said of David and other, that their hearts were perfect with the Lord. But that whereof I speak now is neither of these, but the third fashion of perfectness; to wit, the perfectness of a soul hallowed unto God, and set apart for Him. This is not done for us, like the first manner; nor by us, like the second manner; but in us, by the power of the Holy Ghost. This is the cleansing out of these dregs, which shall leave the wine pure and meet for the King’s use. And this, though it be begun the very moment the heart turneth unto God, will never be ended till we stand before Him in glory.
“Doth one of you say in his heart, How can I tell what be dregs? Well, oft-times we cannot. We be apt to mistake therein. But He can. Pray Him to purge you from your dregs, and then let Him take what He will. Lord, give to us what we need! But look you, it must be what He seeth you to need, not what ye see.
“Brethren, let us thank God that in His infinite perfectness He changeth not. Let us thank Him also that He is changing us, into the likeness of that perfectness. Let us thank Him that the day is at hand when we shall need no further mutation, but shall be with Him, and shall be like Him, for ever.”
Then the Friar read from his leather book a portion of the Gospel of St. John in Wycliffe’s version: offered another short prayer: blessed his hearers, and departed with rapid steps, like a man who had much work to do, and but little time to do it.
One by one, the little congregation took leave of host and hostess, and passed out into the fresh night air. But the Duke of Exeter sat on: and William Sterys waited his Lord’s pleasure. When all were gone, the noble guest rose.
“May I pray you of your name, good master?” he said to Jack.
“Truly, my gracious Lord, it might be bettered. I am but a Goose, at your Lordship’s bidding—John Goose, an’ it like you.”
“I would fain wit, good Master Goose, if you do ever lodge any in your house? Is there a spare chamber that you were willing to let out to any?”
John’s eyes went to his grandmother for a reply.
“Well-a-day!” murmured the old woman, apparently rather staggered by the suddenness of the proposition, and requiring some time to consider it. “I scarce can tell. There is the chamber o’er here, that might be cleared forth, and the gear set in the porch-chamber. Yet mefeareth, did we our best, it should scarce be meet for any servant of such as your gracious Lordship.”
“I ask it not for my servant; I want it for myself,” said the Duke quietly.
Poor Mrs. Goose looked dumb-foundered, as she felt.
“My gracious Lord, so poor a lodging as we could”—— began John Goose.
“Nay, Master Goose, but my need is to lie hid. I desire to be where men shall not think lightly to look for me. And I seek an house whereon God’s peace cometh. Moreover, I would gladly hear more of Father Alcock’s monitions.”
“My Lord,” said the old woman with some dignity, “if that be what your Lordship seeks, you shall find it here. You be not the first peer of England that hath lain hid in this house. Sixty years gone, when he that was sometime mine husband was a little lad, for divers weeks concealed in this house was Sir John Oldcastle, sometime Lord Cobham, that died for Christ’s sake and the Gospel’s. If it content your Lordship to be as well—nay, better lodged than he was, come.”
“Abundantly, good Mother!” said the Duke. “And was that true man in the chamber where ye would put me?”
“Nay, my Lord, he had worser lodging than you shall find.—Jack, light a candle, and show his Lordship where my Lord Cobham lay.”
John obeyed, and the Duke followed him, out of the kitchen and through the workshop, into a large closet in the wall of the latter room. Clearing away an armful of skins from the latter, John slipped back a sliding panel, by some mechanism known to himself, and disclosed a small, dark, dusty room, a little larger than the closet into which it opened, and furnished only with a leaf-table and a stool.
“Here, as I have heard,” said John, “his Lordship lay during the day: and at night, when work was over, he came forth into the chamber which your Lordship shall have, and there he commonly sat a-writing till late into the night. Once, when a party came that ’twas thought might know the chamber, his Lordship donned an apron and a jerkin, and was set to work in the shop. ’Tis said,” added John with a merry laugh, “he spoiled a skin thereby: but my grandfather recked not, but would have it set by as a precious thing, and ’twas so kept, some years.”
“And did the men at work here never hear him?”
“Nay, I reckon they made too much noise themselves. Only one that was next unto him when he was in the shop said after unto my grandsire that he had taken a raw hand a-work, which should be some cost to train,” said John, laughing.
“That can I conceive,” replied the Duke, with a smile. “Well, Master Goose, so you and yours be willing, I will gladly engage this chamber. For the hire, charge you what is meet.”
The whole transaction was so unwonted that the Duke really did not know what to offer.
“Oh, my gracious Lord, we shall find no bones in that matter,” returned John Goose, metaphorically. “I will leave that to Mother, seeing the charge shall be hers and my sisters’. Mefeareth, howbeit, that our rude cookery shall little content your good Lordship.”
“Bread and water would content me,” answered the Duke, “so your cookery is little like to fail.”
There were at this time as many delicate gradations of rank in cooking as in costume. Peers were entitled to five dishes at a meal; gentlemen to three, and meaner persons to two, exclusive of pottage. The distinctions of bread have been already mentioned. The daily provision made for the household of the Duke of Clarence is on record, and it reads almost like the details of an army commissariat. For a man who was accustomed to a provision of two oxen, twelve sheep, twelve pigs, and thirty-six barrels of fish—with a great many other things—as the daily consumption of his household, to come down to the style of living of a small tradesman, was a descent indeed. Trade was then held in very low estimation, even a first-class merchant being reckoned below a gentleman’s servant. The supply customary for such a house as that of John Goose, was bread and dripping for breakfast, with ale to drink; one dish of meat, with a vegetable and bread, for dinner; the same for supper on grand occasions, perhaps with a pudding or pie in addition; but in all ordinary cases, the supper was brown bread and buttermilk. Only one thing, therefore, could more have astonished old Mrs. Goose than the Duke’s expressed indifference on this point; and that would have been to find that he was willing to sleep on a mattress. Down beds for the upper ten—mattresses for the common folks—was the arrangement in the fifteenth century. I said, only one thing; but there was indeed a lower depth even than this, which to see would have reduced Mrs. Goose to the furthest point of amazement. Had the Duke—for any purpose short of disguise—made his appearance with a long cloak, a buff jerkin, a fustian doublet, and neither gloves nor rings, she would almost have thought the world was coming to an end.
It was, therefore, as may be conjectured, with some trepidation, that Mrs. Goose ventured to superintend her grand-daughters, Joan and Cicely, in the preparation of the room destined for so superior an occupant. The estimation in which a Brahmin of the highest caste is held by a Pariah is alone to be compared with the feelings wherewith Mrs. Goose regarded her lodger elect. She was deeply concerned to remember that the Duke would be accustomed to sleep on cambric sheets, and to eat from gold plate, while she had nothing better to offer him than blankets in the first place, and wooden trenchers in the second. But she was far from realising that, during many years now, the Duke had been accustomed to sleep on whatever he could get to sleep on; and that a good meal served on a wooden trencher was luxury to a man who had begged his bread for months in exile. The cloth of Rennes and the gold plate which were the proper adjuncts of his rank had receded into the far distance, behind the long years of want and pain which Providence had decreed for him.
“Eh dear!” exclaimed Mrs. Goose, surveying her preparations when complete, with her head on one side, as if that would assist her sight. “Gramercy, but it shall be a come-down for the like of him!”
“’Tis the best we can do, Mother,” said Cicely. “And ‘somewhat is better than nought.’”
“Eh, good lack, but ’tis a small somewhat!” returned the old woman. “Why, I trow he shall have washed him in silver basins set with turkey stones,54 and drank out of cups of gold all bordered with pearls.”
“Mighty discomfortous, in good sooth!” said Cicely. “I would liefer have a good cow’s horn any day. It should hold the drink every whit as well, and be a deal smoother to take in your lips.”
“And, dear heart! how shall we find to our hands aught fit for such an one to drink? Why, the meanest matter that hath passed his lips, I warrant you, shall be Malmsey or claret wine at sixpence the gallon.55 And I doubt not he hath ate pike56 and marmalade every day to his dinner; aye, peacocks and rice, too.”
“Well, then,” rejoined Cicely, “it shall be a change for him to come down to cod and bacon. I dare reckon he never tasted them.”
A few days later, Mrs. Goose made a deprecatory remark of the same kind to the Duke himself. It was met with a smile which was a blending of sadness and amusement, and an assurance that for eighteen mouths of his life he had never dined at all, and could therefore easily afford to put up with inexpensive fare now. Mrs. Goose was struck to silence—until she reached the kitchen, when she made up for it in notes of exclamation.
The life passed by the Duke in his retirement was very quiet. He had brought with him a collection of books which struck the unaccustomed eyes of his hosts with the magnitude of a public library. But John, who was used to make quiet observation of all that passed under his eyes, noticed that one after another of these was gradually laid aside upon the shelf and left unused, until the number was reduced to two, which continued in daily employment. He was curious to know what they were: but as he could not read, it was of no use to open them. At last, one day when Father Alcock came, and the Duke was out, John brought the two books to the Friar, and asked to be told what they were.
“The Confessions of St. Austin, my son,” answered the monk, opening the one that came first: “an holy volume, and good.”
“And this, Father?” pursued John, offering the other.
“A better, my son, for it is the best of all—the true Word of God, that liveth and abideth for ever. Here be the Psalms of David, and the New Testament, bound in one, and in the Latin tongue.”
John put the volumes back in his lodger’s room with a feeling of satisfaction. It gratified him also to see how regularly the Duke attended the weekly “monition.” In all other respects, the lodger made little impression on the household, and less on the world outside. He dressed as an ordinary gentleman: and as soon as he had ceased to be a nine days’ wonder to the Joans and Megs of the neighbourhood, nobody took further notice of him. John Goose found him a very silent man, who dealt chiefly in matter-of-fact when he spoke at all, and sometimes heaved sighs which went to his young host’s tender heart. No one ever came to see him but his servant Will Sterys: and he kept indoors until the dusk had fallen. And so the days went on.
Notes
46 Scott’s Marmion.
47 Verse 19.
48 Jer. xlviii. 11, Vulgate.
49 Isaiah i. 5.
50 Ezek. xxiv. 13.
51 Matt v. 8
52 Matt v. 48.
53 Ezek. xvi. 14.
54 Turquoise.
55 A high price at this time; threepence or fourpence a gallon was the cost of ordinary wine.
56 Pike was now the most costly fish in the market, being ten times the value of cod and turbot. Marmalade was about two shillings or half-a-crown the pound; peacocks, about three shillings each, were reserved for the nobility; rice was very scarce and dear.