Chapter 8

At the nether end of the hall, a huge, heavy, stone-wrought chimney-piece projected itself ten feet from the wall, adorned with many a cipher, and many a scutcheon of the Royal House of England. In its present state, it yawned like the arched mouth of a funeral vault, or perhaps might be compared to the crater of an extinguished volcano. But the sable complexion of the massive stone-work, and all around it, showed that the time had been when it sent its huge fires blazing up the huge chimney, besides puffing many a volume of smoke over the heads of the jovial guests, whose royalty or nobility did not render them sensitive enough to quarrel with such slight inconvenience. On these occasions, it was the tradition of the house, that two cart-loads of wood was the regular allowance for the fire between noon and curfew, and the andirons, or dogs, as they were termed, constructed for retaining the blazing firewood on the hearth, were wrought in the shape of lions of such gigantic size as might well warrant the legend. There were long seats of stone within the chimney, where, in despite of the tremendous heat, monarchs were sometimes said to have taken their station, and amused themselves with broiling the _umbles_, or _dowsels_, of the deer, upon the glowing embers, with their own royal hands, when happy the courtier who was invited to taste the royal cookery. Tradition was here also ready with her record, to show what merry gibes, such as might be exchanged between prince and peer, had flown about at the jolly banquet which followed the Michaelmas hunt. She could tell, too, exactly, where King Stephen sat when he darned his own princely hose, and knew most of the odd tricks he had put upon little Winkin, the tailor of Woodstock.

Most of this rude revelry belonged to the Plantagenet times. When the house of Tudor ascended to the throne, they were more chary of their royal presence, and feasted in halls and chambers far within, abandoning the outmost hall to the yeomen of the guard, who mounted their watch there, and passed away the night with wassail and mirth, exchanged sometimes for frightful tales of apparitions and sorceries, which made some of those grow pale, in whose ears the trumpet of a French foeman would have sounded as jollily as a summons to the woodland chase.

Joceline pointed out the peculiarities of the place to his gloomy companion more briefly than we have detailed them to the reader. The Independent seemed to listen with some interest at first, but, flinging it suddenly aside, he said in a solemn tone, “Perish, Babylon, as thy master Nebuchadnezzar hath perished! He is a wanderer, and thou shalt be a waste place—yea, and a wilderness—yea, a desert of salt, in which there shall be thirst and famine.”

“There is like to be enough of both to-night,” said Joceline, “unless the good knight’s larder be somewhat fuller than it is wont.”

“We must care for the creature-comforts,” said the Independent, “but in due season, when our duties are done. Whither lead these entrances?”

“That to the right,” replied the keeper, “leads to what are called, the state-apartments, not used since the year sixteen hundred and thirty-nine, when his blessed Majesty”—

“How, sir!” interrupted the Independent, in a voice of thunder, “dost thou speak of Charles Stewart as blessing, or blessed?—beware the proclamation to that effect.”

“I meant no harm,” answered the keeper, suppressing his disposition to make a harsher reply. “My business is with bolts and bucks, not with titles and state affairs. But yet, whatever may have happed since, that poor King was followed with blessings enough from Woodstock, for he left a glove full of broad pieces for the poor of the place”—

“Peace, friend,” said the Independent; “I will think thee else one of those besotted and blinded Papists, who hold, that bestowing of alms is an atonement and washing away of the wrongs and oppressions which have been wrought by the almsgiver. Thou sayest, then, these were the apartments of Charles Stewart?”

“And of his father, James, before him, and Elizabeth, before _him_, and bluff King Henry, who builded that wing, before them all.”

“And there, I suppose, the knight and his daughter dwelt?”

“No,” replied Joceline; “Sir Henry Lee had too much reverence for—for things which are now thought worth no reverence at all—Besides, the state-rooms are unaired, and in indifferent order, since of late years. The Knight Ranger’s apartment lies by that passage to the left.”

“And whither goes yonder stair, which seems both to lead upwards and downwards?”

“Upwards,” replied the keeper, “it leads to many apartments, used for various purposes, of sleeping, and other accommodation. Downwards, to the kitchen, offices, and vaults of the castle, which, at this time of the evening, you cannot see without lights.”

“We will to the apartments of your knight, then,” said the Independent. “Is there fitting accommodation there?”

“Such as has served a person of condition, whose lodging is now worse appointed,” answered the honest keeper, his bile rising so fast that he added, in a muttering and inaudible tone, “so it may well serve a crop-eared knave like thee.”

He acted as the usher, however, and led on towards the ranger’s apartments.

This suite opened by a short passage from the hall, secured at time of need by two oaken doors, which could be fastened by large bars of the same, that were drawn out of the wall, and entered into square holes, contrived for their reception on the other side of the portal. At the end of this passage, a small ante-room received them, into which opened the sitting apartment of the good knight—which, in the style of the time, might have been termed a fair summer parlour—lighted by two oriel windows, so placed as to command each of them a separate avenue, leading distant and deep into the forest. The principal ornament of the apartment, besides two or three family portraits of less interest, was a tall full-length picture, that hung above the chimney-piece, which, like that in the hall, was of heavy stone-work, ornamented with carved scutcheons, emblazoned with various devices. The portrait was that of a man about fifty years of age, in complete plate armour, and painted in the harsh and dry manner of Holbein—probably, indeed, the work of that artist, as the dates corresponded. The formal and marked angles, points and projections of the armour, were a good subject for the harsh pencil of that early school. The face of the knight was, from the fading of the colours, pale and dim, like that of some being from the other world, yet the lines expressed forcibly pride and exultation.

He pointed with his leading-staff, or truncheon, to the background, where, in such perspective as the artist possessed, were depicted the remains of a burning church, or monastery, and four or five soldiers, in red cassocks, bearing away in triumph what seemed a brazen font or laver. Above their heads might be traced in scroll, “_Lee Victor sic voluit_.” Right opposite to the picture, hung, in a niche in the wall, a complete set of tilting armour, the black and gold colours, and ornaments of which exactly corresponded with those exhibited in the portrait.

The picture was one of those which, from something marked in the features and expression, attract the observation even of those who are ignorant of art. The Independent looked at it until a smile passed transiently over his clouded brow. Whether he smiled to see the grim old cavalier employed in desecrating a religious house—(an occupation much conforming to the practice of his own sect)—whether he smiled in contempt of the old painter’s harsh and dry mode of working—or whether the sight of this remarkable portrait revived some other ideas, the under-keeper could not decide.

The smile passed away in an instant, as the soldier looked to the oriel windows. The recesses within them were raised a step or two from the wall. In one was placed a walnut-tree reading-desk, and a huge stuffed arm-chair, covered with Spanish leather. A little cabinet stood beside, with some of its shuttles and drawers open, displaying hawks-bells, dog-whistles, instruments for trimming falcons’ feathers, bridle-bits of various constructions, and other trifles connected with silvan sport.

The other little recess was differently furnished. There lay some articles of needle-work on a small table, besides a lute, with a book having some airs written down in it, and a frame for working embroidery. Some tapestry was displayed around the recess, with more attention to ornament than was visible in the rest of the apartment; the arrangement of a few bow-pots, with such flowers as the fading season afforded, showed also the superintendence of female taste.

Tomkins cast an eye of careless regard upon these subjects of female occupation, then stepped into the farther window, and began to turn the leaves of a folio, which lay open on the reading-desk, apparently with some interest. Joceline, who had determined to watch his motions without interfering with them, was standing at some distance in dejected silence, when a door behind the tapestry suddenly opened, and a pretty village maid tripped out with a napkin in her hand, as if she had been about some household duty.

“How now, Sir Impudence?” she said to Joceline in a smart tone; “what do you here prowling about the apartments when the master is not at home?”

But instead of the answer which perhaps she expected, Joceline Joliffe cast a mournful glance towards the soldier in the oriel window, as if to make what he said fully intelligible, and replied with a dejected appearance and voice, “Alack, my pretty Phœbe, there come those here that have more right or might than any of us, and will use little ceremony in coming when they will, and staying while they please.”

He darted another glance at Tomkins, who still seemed busy with the book before him, then sidled close to the astonished girl, who had continued looking alternately at the keeper and at the stranger, as if she had been unable to understand the words of the first, or to comprehend the meaning of the second being present.

“Go,” whispered Joliffe, approaching his mouth so near her cheek, that his breath waved the curls of her hair; “go, my dearest Phœbe, trip it as fast as a fawn down to my lodge—I will soon be there, and”—

“Your lodge, indeed” said Phœbe; “you are very bold, for a poor kill-buck that never frightened any thing before save a dun deer—_Your_ lodge, indeed!—I am like to go there, I think.” “Hush, hush! Phœbe— here is no time for jesting. Down to my hut, I say, like a deer, for the knight and Mrs. Alice are both there, and I fear will not return hither again.—All’s naught, girl—and our evil days are come at last with a vengeance—we are fairly at bay and fairly hunted down.”

“Can this be, Joceline?” said the poor girl, turning to the keeper with an expression of fright in her countenance, which she had hitherto averted in rural coquetry.

“As sure, my dearest Phœbe, as”—

The rest of the asseveration was lost in Phœbe’s ear, so closely did the keeper’s lips approach it; and if they approached so very near as to touch her cheek, grief, like impatience, hath its privileges, and poor Phœbe had enough of serious alarm to prevent her from demurring upon such a trifle.

But no trifle was the approach of Joceline’s lips to Phœbe’s pretty though sunburnt cheek, in the estimation of the Independent, who, a little before the object of Joceline’s vigilance, had been more lately in his turn the observer of the keeper’s demeanour, so soon as the interview betwixt Phœbe and him had become so interesting. And when he remarked the closeness of Joceline’s argument, he raised his voice to a pitch of harshness that would have rivalled that of an ungreased and rusty saw, and which at once made Joceline and Phœbe spring six feet apart, each in contrary directions, and if Cupid was of the party, must have sent him out at the window like it wild duck flying from a culverin. Instantly throwing himself into the attitude of a preacher and a reprover of vice, “How now!” he exclaimed, “shameless and impudent as you are!—What—chambering and wantoning in our very presence!—How— would you play your pranks before the steward of the Commissioners of the High Court of Parliament, as ye would in a booth at the fulsome fair, or amidst the trappings and tracings of a profane dancing-school, where the scoundrel minstrels make their ungodly weapons to squeak, ‘Kiss and be kind, the fiddler’s blind?’—But here,” he said, dealing a perilous thump upon the volume—“Here is the King and high priest of those vices and follies!—Here is he, whom men of folly profanely call nature’s miracle!—Here is he, whom princes chose for their cabinet-keeper, and whom maids of honour take for their bed-fellow!— Here is the prime teacher of fine words, foppery and folly—Here!”— (dealing another thump upon the volume—and oh! revered of the Roxburghe, it was the first folio—beloved of the Bannatyne, it was Hemmings and Condel—it was the _editio princeps_)—“On thee,” he continued—“on thee, William Shakspeare, I charge whate’er of such lawless idleness and immodest folly hath defiled the land since thy day!”

“By the mass, a heavy accusation,” said Joceline, the bold recklessness of whose temper could not be long overawed; “Odds pitlikins, is our master’s old favourite, Will of Stratford, to answer for every buss that has been snatched since James’s time?—a perilous reckoning truly—but I wonder who is sponsible for what lads and lasses did before his day?” “Scoff not,” said the soldier, “lest I, being called thereto by the voice within me, do deal with thee as a scorner. Verily, I say, that since the devil fell from Heaven, he never lacked agents on earth; yet nowhere hath he met with a wizard having such infinite power over men’s souls as this pestilent fellow Shakspeare. Seeks a wife a foul example for adultery, here she shall find it—Would a man know how to train his fellow to be a murderer, here shall he find tutoring—Would a lady marry a heathen negro, she shall have chronicled example for it—Would any one scorn at his Maker, he shall be furnished with a jest in this book— Would he defy his brother in the flesh, he shall be accommodated with a challenge—Would you be drunk, Shakspeare will cheer you with a cup— Would you plunge in sensual pleasures, he will soothe you to indulgence, as with the lascivious sounds of a lute. This, I say, this book is the well-head and source of all those evils which have overrun the land like a torrent, making men scoffers, doubters, deniers, murderers, makebates, and lovers of the wine-pot, haunting unclean places, and sitting long at the evening-wine. Away with him, away with him, men of England! to Tophet with his wicked book, and to the Vale of Hinnom with his accursed bones! Verily but that our march was hasty when we passed Stratford, in the year 1643, with Sir William Waller; but that our march was hasty”—

“Because Prince Rupert was after you with his cavaliers,” muttered the incorrigible Joceline.

“I say,” continued the zealous trooper, raising his voice and extending his arm—“but that our march was by command hasty, and that we turned not aside in our riding, closing our ranks each one upon the other as becomes men of war, I had torn on that day the bones of that preceptor of vice and debauchery from the grave, and given them to the next dunghill. I would have made his memory a scoff and a hissing!”

“That is the bitterest thing he has said yet,” observed the keeper. “Poor Will would have liked the hissing worse than all the rest.” “Will the gentleman say any more?” enquired Phœbe in a whisper. “Lack-a-day, he talks brave words, if one knew but what they meant. But it is a mercy our good knight did not see him ruffle the book at that rate—Mercy on us, there would certainly have been bloodshed.—But oh, the father—see how he is twisting his face about!—Is he ill of the colic, think’st thou, Joceline? Or, may I offer him a glass of strong waters?”

“Hark thee hither, wench!” said the keeper, “he is but loading his blunderbuss for another volley; and while he turns up his eyes, and twists about his face, and clenches his fist, and shuffles and tramples with his feet in that fashion, he is bound to take no notice of any thing. I would be sworn to cut his purse, if he had one, from his side, without his feeling it.”

“La! Joceline,” said Phœbe, “and if he abides here in this turn of times, I dare say the gentleman will be easily served.”

“Care not thou about that,” said Joliffe; “but tell me softly and hastily, what is in the pantry?”

“Small housekeeping enough,” said Phœbe; “a cold capon and some comfits, and the great standing venison pasty, with plenty of spice—a manchet or two besides, and that is all.”

“Well, it will serve for a pinch—wrap thy cloak round thy comely body—get a basket and a brace of trenchers and towels, they are heinously impoverished down yonder—carry down the capon and the manchets—the pasty must abide with this same soldier and me, and the pie-crust will serve us for bread.”

“Rarely,” said Phœbe; “I made the paste myself—it is as thick as the walls of Fair Rosamond’s Tower.”

“Which two pairs of jaws would be long in gnawing through, work hard as they might,” said the keeper. “But what liquor is there?”

“Only a bottle of Alicant, and one of sack, with the stone jug of strong waters,” answered Phœbe.

“Put the wine-flasks into thy basket,” said Joceline, “the knight must not lack his evening draught—and down with thee to the hut like a lapwing. There is enough for supper, and to-morrow is a new day.—Ha! by heaven I thought yonder man’s eye watched us—No—he only rolled it round him in a brown study—Deep enough doubtless, as they all are.—But d—n him, he must be bottomless if I cannot sound him before the night’s out.—Hie thee away, Phœbe.”

But Phœbe was a rural coquette, and, aware that Joceline’s situation gave him no advantage of avenging the challenge in a fitting way, she whispered in his ear, “Do you think our knight’s friend, Shakspeare, really found out all these naughty devices the gentleman spoke of?”

Off she darted while she spoke, while Joliffe menaced future vengeance with his finger, as he muttered, “Go thy way, Phœbe Mayflower, the lightest-footed and lightest-hearted wench that ever tripped the sod in Woodstock-park!—After her, Bevis, and bring her safe to our master at the hut.”

The large greyhound arose like a human servitor who had received an order, and followed Phœbe through the hall, first licking her hand to make her sensible of his presence, and then putting himself to a slow trot, so as best to accommodate himself to the light pace of her whom he convoyed, whom Joceline had not extolled for her activity without due reason. While Phœbe and her guardian thread the forest glades, we return to the Lodge.

The Independent now seemed to start as if from a reverie. “Is the young woman gone?” said he.

“Ay, marry is she,” said the keeper; “and if your worship hath farther commands, you must rest contented with male attendance.”

“Commands—umph—I think the damsel might have tarried for another exhortation,” said the soldier—“truly, I profess my mind was much inclined toward her for her edification.”

“Oh, sir,” replied Joliffe, “she will be at church next Sunday, and if your military reverence is pleased again to hold forth amongst us, she will have use of the doctrine with the rest. But young maidens of these parts hear no private homilies.—And what is now your pleasure? Will you look at the other rooms, and at the few plate articles which have been left?”

“Umph—no,” said the Independent—“it wears late, and gets dark—thou hast the means of giving us beds, friend?”

“Better you never slept in,” replied the keeper.

“And wood for a fire, and a light, and some small pittance of creature-comforts for refreshment of the outward man?” continued the soldier.

“Without doubt,” replied the keeper, displaying a prudent anxiety to gratify this important personage.

In a few minutes a great standing candlestick was placed on an oaken table. The mighty venison pasty, adorned with parsley, was placed on the board on a clean napkin; the stone-bottle of strong waters, with a blackjack full of ale, formed comfortable appendages; and to this meal sate down in social manner the soldier, occupying a great elbow-chair, and the keeper, at his invitation, using the more lowly accommodation of a stool, at the opposite side of the table. Thus agreeably employed, our history leaves them for the present.

CHAPTER THE FOURTH.

Yon path of greensward Winds round by sparry grot and gay pavilion; There is no flint to gall thy tender foot, There’s ready shelter from each breeze, or shower.— But duty guides not that way—see her stand, With wand entwined with amaranth, near yon cliffs. Oft where she leads thy blood must mark thy footsteps, Oft where she leads thy head must bear the storm. And thy shrunk form endure heat, cold, and hunger; But she will guide thee up to noble heights, Which he who gains seems native of the sky, While earthly things lie stretch’d beneath his feet, Diminish’d, shrunk, and valueless—

ANONYMOUS.

The reader cannot have forgotten that after his scuffle with the commonwealth soldier, Sir Henry Lee, with his daughter Alice, had departed to take refuge in the hut of the stout keeper Joceline Joliffe. They walked slow, as before, for the old knight was at once oppressed by perceiving these last vestiges of royalty fall into the hands of republicans, and by the recollection of his recent defeat. At times he paused, and, with his arms folded on his bosom, recalled all the circumstances attending his expulsion from a house so long his home. It seemed to him that, like the champions of romance of whom he had sometimes read, he himself was retiring from the post which it was his duty to guard, defeated by a Paynim knight, for whom the adventure had been reserved by fate. Alice had her own painful subjects of recollection, nor had the tenor of her last conversation with her father been so pleasant as to make her anxious to renew it until his temper should be more composed; for with an excellent disposition, and much love to his daughter, age and misfortunes, which of late came thicker and thicker, had given to the good knight’s passions a wayward irritability unknown to his better days. His daughter, and one or two attached servants, who still followed his decayed fortunes, soothed his frailty as much as possible, and pitied him even while they suffered under its effects.

It was a long time ere he spoke, and then he referred to an incident already noticed. “It is strange,” he said, “that Bevis should have followed Joceline and that fellow rather than me.”

“Assure yourself, sir,” replied Alice, “that his sagacity saw in this man a stranger, whom he thought himself obliged to watch circumspectly, and therefore he remained with Joceline.”

“Not so, Alice,” answered Sir Henry; “he leaves me because my fortunes have fled from me. There is a feeling in nature, affecting even the instinct, as it is called, of dumb animals, which teaches them to fly from misfortune. The very deer there will butt a sick or wounded buck from the herd; hurt a dog, and the whole kennel will fall on him and worry him; fishes devour their own kind when they are wounded with a spear; cut a crow’s wing, or break its leg, the others will buffet it to death.”

“That may be true of the more irrational kinds of animals among each other,” said Alice, “for their whole life is well nigh a warfare; but the dog leaves his own race to attach himself to ours; forsakes, for his master, the company, food, and pleasure of his own kind; and surely the fidelity of such a devoted and voluntary servant as Bevis hath been in particular, ought not to be lightly suspected.”