Captain Ravenshaw; Or, The Maid of Cheapside. A Romance of Elizabethan London. Robert Neilson Stephens
be empty because no sound comes from it, my only hope being to pilfer a little warmth nobody will miss, perchance to fall heir to a drop of wine at the bottom of a glass, or a bone upon an uncleared table. And lo, I find myself in the presence of a gentleman asleep before a pot of mulled canary, which he has scarce wet his throat withal. In three swallows I make the canary my own, just in time to set down the pot before in comes a tapster. I feign I am in search of friends, who must be in t'other chamber. To make good the deceit, I must needs look in at t'other chamber door; when, behold, some follower of Mars, who looks as hungry as myself, pelts me with poultry. It is plainly a gift of the gods, and I am no such ill-mannered clown as to stay and inquire into the matter. Well, gaudeamus igitur, my sweet bird; here we are at St. Mary Cole Church, on the steps of which we shall make each other's better acquaintance. Jove! – or rather Bacchus! – what tumult a pint or so of mulled wine makes in the head of a poor master of arts, when too suddenly imbibed!"
He went half-way up the steps and sat down, crouching into the smallest figure possible, as if he might thus offer the least surface to the cold. Sinking his teeth into the succulent breast of the roast fowl, he forgot the weather in the joy of eating. But he had scarce taken two bites when he was fain to suspend his pleasure, for the sound of rapid footfalls came along the way he had just traversed. He took alarm.
"Sit quiet now, in God's name, Master Holyday!" he mentally adjured himself. "'Tis mayhap one in search of the fowl. Night, I am beholden to thee for thy mantle."
The person strode past and into Cheapside without apprehension of the scholar's presence upon the steps. The scholar could not make out the man's looks, but could divine from sundry muttered oaths he gave vent to, and from his incautious haste of movement, that he was angry.
"God 'a' mercy! how he takes to heart the loss of a paltry fowl!" mused Master Holyday, resuming the consumption of his supper on the church steps. "For, certes, 'twas from the Windmill he came; from his voice, and the copiousness of his swearing, I should take him to be that very soldier whom the gods impelled to provide me with supper. Well, he is now out of hearing; and a good thing, too, for there comes the moon at last from the ragged edge of yon black cloud. Blow, wind, and clear the sky for her. Pish! what is this? Can I not find my mouth? Ha, ha! 'tis the mulled wine."
The scholar had indeed struck his nose with the fowl, when he had meant to bring it again between his teeth. He was conscious of the increased effect of the wine in other ways, too, and chiefly in a pleasanter perception of everything, a sense of agreeable comicality in all his surroundings, a warmed regard for all objects within view or thought. This enhanced the enjoyment of his meal. The moonlight, though frequently dimmed by rushing scraps of cloud, made visible the streets near whose junction he sat, so that the house fronts stood strangely forth in weird shine and shadow. The scholar, shivering upon the steps, was the only living creature in the scene. Yet there seemed to be a queer half-life come into inanimate things. The wind could be heard moaning sometimes in unseen passages. The hanging signs creaked as if they now and then conversed one with another in brief, monosyllabic language.
"In the daylight," thought the scholar, "men and women possess the streets, their customs prevail, and their opinions rule. But now, forsooth, the house fronts and the signs, the casements and the weathercocks, have their conference. Are they considering solely of their own matters, or do they tell one another tales of the foolish beings that move about on legs, hurrying and chattering, by day? Faith, is it of me they are talking? See with what a blank look those houses gaze down at me, like a bench of magistrates at a rogue. But the house at the end, the tall one with the straight front, – I swear it is frowning upon me. And the one beside it, with the fat oriel windows, and whose upper stories belly so far out over the street, – as I'm a gentleman and a scholar, 'tis laughing at me. Has it come to this? – to be a thing of mirth to a monster of wood and plaster, a huge face with eyes of glass? For this did Ralph Holyday take his degrees at Cambridge University, and was esteemed as able a disputant as ever came forth of Benet College? Go thy ways, Ralph; better wert thou some fat citizen snoring behind yon same walls, than Master Holyday, magister artium, lodging houseless on the church steps with all thy scholarship. Not so, neither; thou wouldst be damned rather! Hark, who is it walks in Cheapside, and coming this way, too?"
He might have recognised the tread as the same which had some minutes before moved in the opposite direction; though it was now less rapid, as if the owner of the feet had walked off some of his wrath. Coming into view at the end of the Old Jewry, that owner proved to be in truth the very soldier of whom Holyday had caught a glimpse at the tavern. The soldier, turning by some impulse, saw the scholar on the steps; but his warlike gaze had now no terror for Master Holyday, who had put at least half of the fowl beyond possible recovery, and whose appetite was no longer keen.
"God save you, sir!" said the scholar, courteously. "Were you seeking a certain roast fowl?"
"Not I, sirrah," replied Captain Ravenshaw, approaching Holyday. "You are he that stood in the doorway, perchance? Rest easy; the fowl was none of mine. I should scorn to swallow a morsel of it."
And yet he eyed it in such a manner that Master Holyday, who was a good judge of a hungry glance, said, placidly:
"You are welcome to what is left of it here." Which offer the scholar enforced with a satisfied sigh, indicating fulness of stomach.
The captain made a very brief pretence of silent hesitation, then accepted the remainder of the feast from the scholar's hands, saying:
"Worshipful sir, it should go hard with me ere I would refuse true hospitality. Have I not seen you about the town before this night?" He sat down beside Holyday, and began to devour the already much-diminished fowl.
"I know not," replied the scholar, who had a mild, untroubled way of speaking. "'Twas last Michaelmas I came to London. I have kept some riotous company, but, if I have met you, I remember not."
"'Slight! you know then who I be?"
"Not I, truly."
"Yet you call me riotous."
"That argues no previous knowledge. Though I be a Cambridge man, it takes none of my scholarship to know a gentleman of brawls at sight, a roaring boy, a swaggerer of the taverns – "
"Why, boy, why! Do you mean offence in these names?"
"No offence in the world. You see I bear no sword, being but a poor master of arts. None so bold of speech as the helpless, among honourable men of the sword."
"Some truth in that. Look ye, young sir, hast ever heard of one Ravenshaw, a captain, about the town here?"
"Ay, he is the loudest roarer of them all, I have heard; one whose bite is as bad as his bark, too, which is not the case with all of these braggadocios; but he is a scurvy rascal, is he not? a ragged hector of the ale-houses. Is it he you mean?"
"Ha! that is his reputation? Well, to say truth, he may comfort himself by knowing he deserves it. But the world used him scurvily first – nay, a plague on them that whine for themselves! I am that Ravenshaw."
"Then I must deal softly; else I am a hare as good as torn to pieces by the dogs."
"Why, no, scholar, thou needst not be afeard. I like thee, young night-walker. Thou wert most civil concerning this fowl. 'Od's light! but for thee, my sudden pride had played my belly a sad trick this night. Thou art one to be trusted, I see, and when I have finished with this bird, I will tell thee something curious of my rascal reputation. But while I eat, prithee, who art thou? and what is it hath sent thee to be a lodger on the steps of St. Mary Cole Church? Come, scholar; thou might do worse than make a friend of roaring Ravenshaw."
"Nay, I have no enemies I would wish killed. But I am any man's gossip, if he have inclination for my discourse, and be not without lining to his headpiece. My name is Ralph Holyday; I am only son to Mr. Francis Holyday, a Kentish gentleman of good estate. He is as different a manner of man from me as this night is from a summer day. He is stubborn and tempestuous; he will have his way, though the house fall for it. He has no love of books and learning, neither; but my mother, seeing that I was of a bookish mind, worked upon him unceasingly to send me to the university, till at last, for peace' sake, he packed me off to Cambridge. While I was there, my mother died – rest her soul, poor lady! After I took my degrees,