Captain Ravenshaw; Or, The Maid of Cheapside. A Romance of Elizabethan London. Robert Neilson Stephens
his expression of face was melancholy, moody, dreamy; as he gazed into the fire he seemed lost in his own thoughts. His momentary smile had brought a singularly sweet and noble light into his face; but that light had vanished with the smile.
"I must thank you, Ermsby, and all of ye," he said, after a short silence. "You drew the fellow away like the best of cozeners. How got you rid of him so soon?"
"Faith, by his taking note of your absence, and guessing what was afoot," replied the handsome gallant. "He's e'en looking for you now. A murrain on him! his ribs should have felt steel, but for thy fear of a brawl, Jerningham."
"Thou'rt a fool, Ermsby," answered Jerningham, continuing to gaze with saturnine countenance into the fire; "and my daring to call thee so tells how much I fear a fight for its own sake. How often must I put it to you in plain terms? If I be found concerned in roystering or rioting, I forfeit the countenance of my pious kinsman, the bishop. With that I forfeit the further use of his money in our enterprise. Without his money, how are we to complete the fitting of our ship? No ship, no voyage. No voyage, no possessing the fertile islands; and so no fortune, and there's an end. Pish, man, shall we lose all for a sight of some unknown rascal's filthy blood? Not I. You shall see me play the very Puritan till the day my ship lifts anchor for the Western seas."
"You have played the Puritan to-night, sooth," said Ermsby. "To steal after a wench under cover of night, and find out her house for your hidden purposes in future, – there's the soul of Puritanism. Where does she live?"
"I'll still be puritanical, and keep that knowledge to myself," said Jerningham, with the least touch of a smile.
"Nay, man, the secret is ours, too!" protested Ermsby. "We helped you to it. Come, you had best tell; that will put us on our honour to leave her all to you. If you don't, by my conscience, I'll hunt high and low till I find out for myself, and then I won't acknowledge any right of yours to her. Tell us, and make us your abettors; or tell us not, and make us your rivals."
Jerningham was silent for a moment, while he motioned the attending servant to pour him out some wine; then, evidently knowing his men, he replied:
"She led me but a short chase; which was well, as I had to go upon my toes – the sound of her steps was all I had to guide me. When the sound stopped, in Friday Street, I heard the creaking of a gate; it meant she had gone into a back yard. I went on softly, feeling the walls with my hands, till I came to the gate; and there I heard a key turning in a door. I had naught to do but find out what house the gate belonged to. 'Twas the house at the corner of Cheapside."
"And Friday Street? Which side of Friday Street?"
"The east side. 'Tis a goldsmith's shop. Does any one know what goldsmith dwells there?"
No one remembered. These were all gentlemen who, when they were not at sea, divided most of their time between the country and the court; at present they lodged toward the Charing Cross end of the Strand, in a row of houses opposite the riverside palaces of the great. But Jerningham himself lived with his kinsman, the bishop, in Winchester House, across the Thames.
"Time enough to learn that, and win a score of goldsmith's daughters, and tire of 'em too, ere the ship is fitted," said Ermsby, losing interest in the subject; whereupon the conversation shifted to the matter of the ship, then being repaired at Deptford.
From this they fell to dicing, – all but Jerningham, who sat looking steadily before him, as if he saw visions through the clouds of tobacco smoke he sent forth. Presently was heard the noise of pounding at the street door below.
"'Tis that rascal come back, ten to one; he has given over hunting you," said Ermsby to Jerningham.
"Then be sure you open not, Timothy," said Jerningham, addressing the tavern drawer who was staying up to wait upon those privileged to use the house after closing hours.
"No fear," replied Timothy. "They may hammer till they be dead, an they give not the right knock. I'll e'en go look down from the front window, and see who 'tis."
Ermsby went with him; and presently returned with him, saying:
"'Tis our man; and Timothy here knows him. It seems he is one Ravenshaw, a roaring captain. I've heard of the fellow; he talks loud in taverns, and will fight any man for sixpence; a kind of ranger of Turnbull Street – "
"Nay," corrected Timothy; "he is no counterfeit, as most of those rangers be. He roars, and brags, and looks fierce, as they do; but he was with Sir John Norris in Portugal and France, and he can use the rapier, or rapier and dagger, with any man that ever came out of Saviolo's school. I have seen him with the foils, in this very room, when he made all the company wonder. And 'tis well known what duels he has fought. One time, in Hogsdon fields – "
"Oh, that is the man, is it?" said Jerningham, cutting off the drawer's threatened torrent of reminiscence. "Then so much the better he has grown tired of beating at the door. He has gone away, I trust. As ye love me, gentlemen, no scandals till the ship is armed, provisioned, manned, and ready every way for the tide that shall bear us down the Thames."
"And look that you bring no scandal in your siege of this goldsmith's daughter," said Ermsby, jocularly.
"Trust me for that," replied Jerningham.
It was several weeks after this night, and the chilling frown of winter had given place to the smile of May, when, upon a sunny morning, Sir Clement Ermsby, followed by a young page, stepped from a Thames wherry at Winchester stairs to confer with Master Jerningham upon the last preparations for their voyage. They were to sail in three days.
Jerningham was pacing the terrace, frowning upon the ground at his feet, his look more moody than ever, and with something distraught in it; now and then he drew in his breath audibly between his lips, or allowed some restless movement of the hands to belie his customary self-control.
"What a devil is it afflicts you, man?" was Ermsby's greeting, while his page stood at a respectful distance, and began playing with two greyhounds that came bounding up. "This manner is something new. I've seen it for a week in you. Beshrew me if I don't think an evil spirit has crept into you. What's the matter?"
"Nothing's the matter," said Jerningham, in a growling tone. "'Tis my humour."
"'Tis a humour there's no excuse for, then, on a day like this, and with such a prospect before one's eyes." As Sir Clement spoke, he looked over the balustrade to the Thames and the countless-gabled front of the spire-studded city.
The Thames and London were fair to see then. The river was wider than it is now, and was comparatively clean. Swans floated upon its surface, and it was lively with passenger craft, – sailboats, rowboats, tilt-boats, and boats with wooden cabins, gaily decorated barges belonging to royalty and nobility. The Thames, with its numerous landing-stairs, was the principal highway of London. When the queen went from Whitehall to Greenwich, it was, of course, by this water thoroughfare. It was the more convenient way of transit between the city and Westminster, where the courts were held. It had but one bridge at London then, – the old London Bridge of the children's song, "London Bridge is falling down;" the bridge that was a veritable street of houses, and which stood some distance east of where the present London Bridge stands. To many people the better way of crossing to Southwark, when they went to the playhouses or the bear-gardens, was by boat. Water-men were at every landing-place, soliciting custom. When at work, they often sang as they plied the oars. The rich, when they would amuse themselves upon the river in their handsome tilt-boats, took musicians with them. On a fine May day, in the reign of Elizabeth, when the little green waves sparkled in the sunshine, the Thames alone was a sight worth looking at from the terrace of Winchester House, which, as everybody knows, was on the Southwark side, west of the beautiful Church of St. Mary Overie (now St. Saviour's), and which thus commanded a fine view of river and city-front.
Beginning at the far west, where the river came into sight after passing Westminster and Whitehall, its northern bank presented first the long row of great houses that came as far as to the Temple, – houses that were really town castles, with spacious gardens, whose river walls were broken by gates, whence were steps descending to the water. Nearer, grew the stately trees of the Temple garden; nearer yet, rose from the river's edge the frowning walls of the Bridewell, once a palace, and of Baynard's Castle.