The Armourer's PrenticesYonge, Charlotte M. (Charlotte Mary)
History
The Armourer's Prentices
Yonge, Charlotte M. (Charlotte Mary)
Great Britain -- History -- Henry VIII, 1509-1547 -- Fiction
Though the child had never seen or heard of Eastern wailings over the
dead, yet hereditary nature prompted her to the lamentations that
scandalised the priests and even Lucas, who broke in with “Fie, maid,
thou mournest as one who hath no hope.” But Dr. Colet still signed to
them to have patience, and Perronel somehow contrived to draw the
girl’s head on her breast and give her a motherly kiss, such as the
poor child had never felt since she, when almost a babe, had been
lifted from her dying mother’s side in the dark stifling hold of the
vessel in the Bay of Biscay. And in sheer surprise and sense of being
soothed she ceased her cries, listened to the tender whispers and
persuasions about holy men who would care for her father, and his
wishes that she should be a good maid—till at last she yielded, let her
hands be loosed, allowed Perronel to lift the venerable head from her
knee, and close the eyes—then to gather her in her arms, and lead her
to the door, taking her, under Ambrose’s guidance, into Lucas’s abode,
which was as utterly and mournfully dismantled as their own, but where
Perronel, accustomed in her wandering days to all sorts of
contrivances, managed to bind up the streaming hair, and, by the help
of her own cloak, to bring the poor girl into a state in which she
could be led through the streets.
The Dean meantime had bidden Lucas to take shelter at his own house,
and the old Dutchman had given a sort of doubtful acceptance.
Ambrose, meanwhile, half distracted about his brother, craved counsel
of the jester where to seek him.
CHAPTER XVII.
ILL MAY DAY
“With two and two together tied,
Through Temple Bar and Strand they go,
To Westminster, there to be tried,
With ropes about their necks also.”
_Ill May Day_.
And where was Stephen? Crouching, wretched with hunger, cold,
weariness, blows, and what was far worse, sense of humiliation and
disgrace, and terror for the future, in a corner of the yard of
Newgate—whither the whole set of lads, surprised in Warwick Inner Court
by the law students of the Inns of Court, had been driven like so many
cattle, at the sword’s point, with no attention or perception that he
and Giles had been struggling _against_ the spoilers.
Yet this fact made them all the more forlorn. The others, some forty in
number, their companions in misfortune, included most of the Barbican
prentices, who were of the Eagle faction, special enemies alike to
Abenali and to the Dragon, and these held aloof from Headley and
Birkenholt, nay, reviled them for the attack which they declared had
caused the general capture.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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