in full activity; but the sounds and sights of busy life where they were utter strangers, gave Ambrose a sense of loneliness and desertion, and his heart sank as the bolder Stephen threaded the way in the direction of a broad entry over which stood a slender-bodied hart with gold hoofs, horns, collar, and chain.
“How now, my sons?” said a full cheery voice, and to their joy, they found themselves pushed up against Father Shoveller.
“Returned already! Did you get scant welcome at Hyde? Here, come where we can get a free breath, and tell me.”
They passed through the open gateway of the White Hart, into the court, but before listening to them, the monk exchanged greetings with the hostess, who stood at the door in a broad hat and velvet bodice, and demanded what cheer there was for noon-meat.
“A jack, reverend sir, eels and a grampus fresh sent up from Hampton; also fresh-killed mutton for such lay folk as are not curious of the Wednesday fast. They are laying the board even now.”
“Lay platters for me and these two young gentlemen,” said the Augustinian. “Ye be my guests, ye wot,” he added, “since ye tarried not for meat at Hyde.”
“Nor did they ask us,” exclaimed Stephen; “lubbers and idlers were the best words they had for us.”
“Ho! ho! That’s the way with the brethren of Saint Grimbald! And your uncle?”
“Alas, sir, he doteth with age,” said Ambrose. “He took Stephen for his own brother, dead under King Harry of Windsor.”
“So! I had heard somewhat of his age and sickness. Who was it who thrust you out?”
“A lean brother with a thin red beard, and a shrewd, puckered visage.”
“Ha! By that token ’twas Segrim the bursar. He wots how to drive a bargain. Saint Austin! but he deemed you came to look after your kinsman’s corrody.”
“He said the king spake of a visitation to abolish corrodies from religious houses,” said Ambrose.
“He’ll abolish the long bow from them first,” said Father Shoveller. “Ay, and miniver from my Lord Abbot’s hood. I’d admonish you, my good brethren of Saint Grimbald, to be in no hurry for a visitation which might scarce stop where you would fain have it. Well, my sons, are ye bound for the Forest again? An ye be, we’ll wend back together, and ye can lie at Silkstede to-night.”
“Alack, kind father, there’s no more home for us in the Forest,” said Ambrose.
“Methought ye had a brother?”
“Yea; but our brother hath a wife.”
“Ho! ho! And the wife will none of you?”
“She would have kept Ambrose to teach her boy his primer,” said Stephen; “but she would none of Spring nor of me.”
“We hoped to receive counsel from our uncle at Hyde,” added Ambrose.
“Have ye no purpose now?” inquired the Father, his jolly good-humoured face showing much concern.
“Yea,” manfully returned Stephen. “ ’Twas what I ever hoped to do, to fare on and seek our fortune in London.”
“Ha! To pick up gold and silver like Dick Whittington. Poor old Spring here will scarce do you the part of his cat,” and the monk’s hearty laugh angered Stephen into muttering, “We are no fools,” but Father Shoveller only laughed the more, saying, “Fair and softly, my son, ye’ll never pick up the gold if ye cannot brook a kindly quip. Have you friends or kindred in London?”
“Yea, that have we, sir,” cried Stephen; “our mother’s own brother, Master Randall, hath come to preferment there in my Lord Archbishop of York’s household, and hath sent us tokens from time to time, which we will show you.”
“Not while we be feasting,” said Father Shoveller, hastily checking Ambrose, who was feeling in his bosom. “See, the knaves be bringing their grampus across the court. Here, we’ll clean our hands, and be ready for the meal;” and he showed them, under a projecting gallery in the inn yard a stone trough, through which flowed a stream of water, in which he proceeded to wash his hands and face, and to wipe them in a coarse towel suspended nigh at hand. Certainly after handling sheep freely there was need, though such ablutions were a refinement not indulged in by all the company who assembled round the well-spread board of the White Hart for the meal after the market. They were a motley company. By the host’s side sat a knight on his way home from pilgrimage to Compostella, or perhaps a mission to Spain, with a couple of squires and other attendants, and converse of political import seemed to be passing between him and a shrewd-looking man in a lawyer’s hood and gown, the recorder of Winchester, who preferred being a daily guest at the White Hart to keeping a table of his own. Country franklins and yeomen, merchants and men-at-arms, palmers and craftsmen, friars and monks, black, white, and grey, and with almost all, Father Shoveller had greeting or converse to exchange. He knew everybody, and had friendly talk with all, on canons or crops, on war or wool, on the prices of pigs or prisoners, on the news of the country side, or on the perilous innovations in learning at Oxford, which might, it was feared, even affect Saint Mary’s College at Winchester.
He did not affect outlandish fishes himself, and dined upon pike, but observing the curiosity of his guests, he took good care to have them well supplied with grampus; also in due time with varieties of the pudding and cake kind which had never dawned on their forest—bred imagination, and with a due proportion of good ale—the same over which the knight might be heard rejoicing, and lauding far above the Spanish or French wines, on which he said he had been half starved.
Father Shoveller mused a good deal over his pike and its savoury stuffing. He was not by any means an ideal monk, but he was equally far from being a scandal. He was the shrewd man of business and manager of his fraternity, conducting the farming operations and making all the bargains, following his rule respectably according to the ordinary standard of his time, but not rising to any spirituality, and while duly observing the fast day, as to the quality of his food, eating with the appetite of a man who lived in the open fields.
But when their hunger was appeased, with many a fragment given to Spring, the young Birkenholts, wearied of the endless talk that was exchanged over the tankard, began to grow restless, and after exchanging signs across Father Shoveller’s solid person, they simultaneously rose, and began to thank him and say they must pursue their journey.
“How now, not so fast, my sons,” said the Father; “tarry a bit, I have more to say to thee. Prayers and provender, thou knowst—I’ll come anon. So, sir, didst say yonder beggarly Flemings haggle at thy price for thy Southdown fleeces. Weight of dirt forsooth! Do not we wash the sheep in the Poolhole stream, the purest water in the shire?”
Manners withheld Ambrose from responding to Stephen’s hot impatience, while the merchant in the sleek puce-coloured coat discussed the Flemish wool market with the monk for a good half-hour longer.
By this time the knight’s horses were brought into the yard, and the merchant’s men had made ready his palfrey, his pack-horse being already on the way; the host’s son came round with the reckoning, and there was a general move. Stephen expected to escape, and hardly could brook the good-natured authority with which Father Shoveller put Ambrose aside, when he would have discharged their share of the reckoning, and took it upon himself. “Said I not ye were my guests?” quoth he. “We missed our morning mass, it will do us no harm to hear Nones in the Minster.”
“Sir, we thank you, but we should be on our way,” said Ambrose, incited by Stephen’s impatient gestures.
“Tut, tut. Fair and softly, my son, or more haste may be worse speed. Methought ye had somewhat to show me.”
Stephen’s youthful independence might chafe, but the habit of submission to authorities made him obediently follow the monk out at the back entrance of the inn, behind which lay the Minster yard, the grand western front rising in front of them, and the buildings of Saint Swithun’s Abbey