Captain Ravenshaw; Or, The Maid of Cheapside. A Romance of Elizabethan London. Robert Neilson Stephens
would have it that I come home, and fit myself to succeed him. Home I went, perforce, but I had no stomach for the life he would lead me. I rather preferred to sit among my books, and to royster at the ale-house in company with a parson, who had as great love for learned disputation as for beer and venison. Many a pleasant day and night have I sat with good Sir Nicholas, drinking, and arguing upon the soul's immortality. This parson had sundry friends, too, good knaves, though less given to learning than to tossing the pot; they were poachers all, to say truth, and none better with the crossbow at a likely deer than the vicar. Thus, when I ought to have been busy in the matter of preserving my father's deer, I would be abroad in forbidden quest of other men's; 'twas, I know not how, the more sportive and curious occupation. Well, my father stormed at these ways of mine, but there was no method of curing them. But one day he became fearful his blood should die out. He must have descendants, he swore, and to that end I must find a wife straightway. Here is where we crossed weapons. I am not blind to the charms of women, but I am cursed with such timidity of them, such bashfulness when I am near them, that if I tried to court one, or if one were put upon me as wife, I should fall to pieces for shaking. I would sooner attempt anew the labours of Hercules than go a-wooing for a wife."
"'Tis a curious affliction," remarked the captain, pausing in his feast. "But many men have it; fighting men, too. There was Dick Rokeby, that was my comrade in France; he that fought with Harry Spence and me, each one 'gainst t'other two, upon the question of the properest oath for a soldier to swear by. Harry was one of your Latin fellows, and held for 'the buckler of Mars.' Dick Rokeby said an Englishman could do no better than swear by the lance of St. George. And I vowed by the spurs of Harry Fift' I would put down any man that thought better of any other oath. We fought it out, three-cornered, in Grey's Inn Fields; and the spurs of Harry Fift' won the day. As for women, I am their enemy on other grounds. There was one I trusted, and when I was at the wars she wronged me with my friend. I have sworn revenge upon the sex, curse 'em! So you would not marry?"
"That I would not. The only women I can approach without trembling at the knees, and my face burning, and my tongue sticking fast, are serving-maids and common drabs, and such as I would not raise to a place of quality. So the end was that, after he had raged and threatened for six months, my father cast me forth, swearing I should never cross his doorsill, or have a penny of him, till I should come back with a wife on my arm. And so I came last Michaelmas to London."
"And how hast made shift to live since then?"
"Why, first upon some money my friend Sir Nick thrust upon me; then by the barter of my clothes in Cornhill; and meanwhile I had writ a play, a tragedy, that Master Henslowe gave me five pounds for."
"I would fain see thy tragedy. How is it named?"
"God knows when it may be played; it has not yet been. It is 'The Lamentable Tragedy of Queen Nitocris.' The story is in a Greek history."
"What, you dare not even discourse with a mere gentlewoman, yet write the intimate histories of queens?"
"Yes, friend; there are many of us poor poets do so. We herd with trulls, and dream of empresses. (A passable decasyllabic line, that!) But I have not been able to sell another tragedy, nor yet to have my sonnets printed, whereby I might get ten pounds for a dedication. And so you see me as I am."
"Well," said the captain, having by this time pretty well stuffed himself, "I like thee the better for being a poet. Such as you know me to be, you will scarce believe it; but I am one – or was once – fitted by nature to take joy in naught so much as in poetry, and the sweet pastoral life that poets praise so. But never whisper this; I were a dead man if the town knew the softness underneath my leathern outside. But in very truth, as for books, I would give all the Plutarchs in the world for one canto of 'The Faerie Queene' or ten pages of the gentler part of Sidney's 'Arcadia.' Had I won my choice, I had passed my days, not in camps and battles, taverns and brawls, but in green meadows, sitting and strolling among flowers, reading some book of faery or shepherds – for I never could make up poetry of my own."
"That picture belies the common report of Captain Ravenshaw."
"Ay, Master Holyday; swaggering Ravenshaw is no shepherd of poesy. But hearken to what I promised thee: I, too, am a gentleman's son; the family is an old one in Worcestershire, – observe I call it not my family. I was early a cast-off scion, and for no fault of mine, I swear. 'Twas the work of a woman, a she-devil, that bewitched my father. But God forbid I should afflict any man, or rouse mine own dead feelings, with the tale of my wrongs! I was no roaring boy then; I was a tame youth, and a modest. But when I found myself out in the world, I soon learned that with a mild mien, unless a man have a craftiness I lacked, he is ever thrust backward, and crushed against the wall, or trodden upon in the ditch. And so for policy I took the time and pains to make myself a master of the sword, not that I might brawl, but that I might go my ways in peace. In good time, I killed two men or so that were thought invincible; and I supposed the noise of this would save me from affronts after that."
"And was it not so?"
"Perchance it had been, if my manner had comported with the deed. But I still went modest in my bearing, and so my prowess was soon forgot; some may have thought my victories an accident of fortune; besides, strangers knew not what I had done, and saw no daring in me; and so I found myself as unconsidered as ever. And at last, when the woman I loved turned treacherous and robbed me of the friend at court on whom my fortune hung, and malice was hatched in me, I bethought me of a new trick. I took on a bold front, an insolent outside; I became a swearer, a swaggerer, a roaring boy, a braggart; and lo! people soon stepped aside to let me pass. I found this blustering masquerade a thousand times more potent to secure immunity than my real swordsmanship had been. The transformation was but skin-deep at first; but the wars, and my hard life and my poverty, helped its increase, so that now it has worked in to the heart of me. There was a time it made me ill to sink my rapier into a man's soft flesh, but I grew to be of stronger stomach. And when I first put on the mask of brazen effrontery, I was often faint within when I seemed most insolent. But now I am indeed roaring Ravenshaw, all but a little of me, and that little often sleeps."
"But this insolence of thine, real or false, seems not to have made thy fortune."
"Nay, but it has made my poverty the less contemptible. Lay not my undoing to it. When the war lasted, I fared well enough, as long as I kept the captainship my friend had got me ere the woman played me false. A score of things have happened to bring me to this pass. My braggadocio, ofttimes enforced with deeds, hath neither helped nor hindered my downfall; it hath stood me in good stead in fair times and foul. Pish, man, but for my reputation, and the fear of my enmity or violence, could I have run up such scores at taverns as I have done, being penniless? How often have I roared dicing fools, and card-playing asses, out of the stakes when they had fairly won 'em? Could any but a man who has made himself feared do such things, and keep out of Newgate or at least the Counter i' the Poultry here?"
"Why, is not that rank robbery, sir?"
"Yes, sir, and rank filling of my empty stomach. Tut, scholar, you have been hungry yourself; roofless, too. Be so as oft as I have been, and with as small chance of mending matters, and I'll give a cracked three farthings for what virtue is left in you. Boy, boy, hast thou yet to learn what a troublesome comrade thy belly is, in time of poverty? What a leader into temptation? Am I, who was once a gentleman, a rascal as well as a brawler? Yes, I am a rascal. So be it; and the more beholden I to my rascality when it find me a dinner, or a warm place to sleep o' nights. Would it might serve us now. Who are these a-coming?"
Some dark figures were approaching from up the Old Jewry, attended by two fellows bearing links, for the moonlight was not to be relied upon. The figures came arm in arm, at a blithe but unsteady gait, swaying and plunging. Presently the captain recognised the gentlemen who had been his afternoon companions at the sign of the Windmill. But Master Vallance was not with them, having doubtless taken lodging at one of the inns near the tavern. The sparks, jubilant with their wine, no sooner made out the captain's form than they hailed him heartily.
"What, old war boy!" cried Master Maylands, a spruce and bold young exquisite. "Well met, well met! Hey, gentles, we'll make a night on't. Captain, you shall captain us, captain!"
"Ay, you shall captain us about the town," put in Master Hawes, who spoke shrilly,