Читать книгу For God and Gold - Julian Stafford Corbett - Страница 5

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It would be wearisome for me to relate all that passed in the weeks that followed my father's funeral, even if I could. But indeed I remember little, except confusedly about men of law who came from London and had long speech with my guardian.

In the business of setting my father's affairs in order I too was a good deal mixed.

'You cannot know too soon,' Sir Fulke said to me, 'what your estate will be. I am one who thinks a lad cannot learn too early to be a good steward, and so thought your father too, Jasper. So from the first I would see you have a say in your own affairs.'

Thus it came about that I was always present when the lawyers came, and though at first I found it irksome, I soon began to take interest in my estate.

Yet one event of these days I must relate, seeing that it was the beginning of things which afterwards played so great a part in my life.

I rode into Rochester one day to see a man of law who dwelt there. As we descended the steep hill that leads from off the downs to the low-lying ground, the whole district was stretched out like a map below us. We could see straight before us the compact little city of Rochester, a mass of red roofs girded with a soft belt of trees, and crowding round the Cathedral and the great Castle, still grim and solid in its decay. About it ran the yellow river in one grand sweep from the bridge to where it turned again between Upnor Castle and the dock at the growing village of Chatham. Right in front of us, where the road was swallowed up between the two round towers of the city gate, was a great crowd. It was no strange thing to see, for hither were wont to gather the mariners from the fleet which rode between the bridge and Upnor and the workmen from the dockyard, that they might gossip and drink at the taverns which lined the way without the gate. To-day, however, it was a greater crowd than usual; so great indeed that we could not pass and had to draw rein.

'What, in the fiend's name,' cried Sir Fulke, 'brings all these stockfish gaping here to block a gentleman's path?'

''Tis Drake, 'tis preaching Drake,' said a good-humoured, weather-beaten sailor who stood by. And sure enough it was; for no sooner were the words out of our friend's mouth than Mr. Drake's jolly red face appeared above the heads of the crowd, as he mounted a stool close to the gate.

'Come, hearken, mariners,' he cried, 'hearken to the Word of God and the whistle of the Lord's boatswain. For the Word of God is like unto a capstan. You can turn it about and about till you tear up the anchor that binds you to earth. Come, then, my lads, and turn it about with me till you tear up the crooked anchor of sin, whereby the devil would moor you to the things of this world.'

This was as much as Sir Fulke could bear, and he cried out, 'What kennel preaching is this? Have you nothing better to liken the blessed Word of God to than a capstan?'

'And wherefore should I not?' cried Drake, not noticing from whom the interruption came. 'What ell of tar-yarn is this, that will take upon him to reprove the similitudes of a preacher to her Majesty's navy? Wherefore, I pray you, should not the Word of God be likened to a capstan, when that blessed servant of the Lord, even Hugh Latimer, did not himself scruple to liken the Mother of God to a saffron-bag?'

'Well, I'll grant you the similitude is right enough,' Sir Fulke called out again. 'For, by God's truth, it seems that a preacher nowadays can turn the Word about and about till he make it pull up anything he will.'

This sally produced a laugh from the rougher part of Drake's audience, and many began to cry out, 'What say you to that, master preacher? Has he not got you now?'

'What have I to say to it?' said Drake, turning fiercely on them. 'Know you not your own trade, you lubberly, roeless sons of herrings? Know you not that when you man a capstan you go but one way, like asses, that you are, in a clay-mill? So it is with the Word. There is one right way, that shall profit you to turn it, and if you twist it another it shall spin you heels over ears in a heap, like the ungodly in the bottomless pit. My similitude was right enough, yet would I have defended it with greater courtesy had I known who challenged it. Make way, lads, make way for Sir Fulke Waldyve; for next under God you shall reverence our blessed Queen and all who hold her commission. Make way, and let me ask pardon for my discourtesy to our most worthy magistrate.'

'Enough, Drake, enough,' said Sir Fulke good-humouredly; 'you outrun me no less in courtesy than wit. Were all preachers such as you there would be little call from Injunctions against preaching without authority, but since such there be, I must even, in virtue of my office, bid you cease, and all this company disperse.'

That they did contentedly, with three cheers for the old knight, who was well known, and loved as much as known, at Rochester.

Mr. Drake was bidden to the 'Crown' by my guardian to take a cup of wine; for it was always his custom to try and part in friendship with those whom he had had occasion to chide.

'But what of the Injunctions about which you are so tender, Sir Fulke?' laughed Drake. 'You forget I am an ecclesiastical person, and may not haunt or resort to taverns or alehouses, vide Injunction No. 7.'

'"Save for your honest necessities,"' returned Sir Fulke. 'So run the words; and your peace-making I hold, in my capacity of Justice, to be a most honest necessity. So come, with no more words, and save your tenderness for less honest occasions.'

So we went to the inn, and there they talked of the times quietly enough till the lawyer came in. Mr. Drake craved leave to carry me home with him when our business was done, that I might see his boys, of whom he seemed very proud, and fish with them on the morrow.

Sir Fulke demurred at first, but when Mr. Drake urged that it would cheer me a little, and perhaps bring the colour back to me, for I was but very poorly after my days of sorrow, my guardian at last consented.

Towards evening, then, Mr. Drake came back for me, and we sallied out together, Sir Fulke crying out as we left that Mr. Drake was not to send me back with any pestilent Calvinistic ideas in my head.

I was surprised that we went across the road down to the landing-stage just below the bridge. For I knew not where Mr. Drake's house could be if we must go to it by water, but I did not say anything till we had taken his boat and were clear of the turmoil which the fast-ebbing tide caused as it fought its way angrily through the narrow arches of the noble bridge.

'Where is your house, Mr. Drake?' I asked, as we reached the stiller water.

'Where is it, my boy?' answered he, chuckling to himself, as if vastly tickled by my question. 'Where, but on no man's land.'

'And where may that be?' asked I, not at all understanding his merriment.

'Why, in God's free tide-way, my lad,' said Mr. Drake, chuckling more heartily than ever. 'Where could an Englishman, and above all a Devonshire man, live better than there, where there are no landlords and no taxes, and every one is his own king? You will know it some day, I hope. Frank knows it. My boys know it.'

I could not quite make out what he meant, and least of all who Frank was, and what he had to do with it. And no wonder, for then I did not know his strange habit of speaking of his sons as 'Frank and my boys.' I did not like to question him more, and was content to listen to him as he told me the names and services of the Queen's ships which we passed. There were a good many of them moored between the bridge and Upnor Castle, whereof some came to great renown afterwards, but then they were few and ill kept compared with what a man may see in the reach to-day.

Clean past Chatham and the one little dock that it then had we went, till we made the reach that runs toward Hoo. Here Mr. Drake stopped rowing and pointed down the river.

'Look, Master Festing,' cried he. 'There she lies, there ride her jolly old bones over no man's land. That is my house, that is my castle, that is where I live with Frank, when he is at home, and my boys.'

I looked to where he pointed, and saw an old hulk, after the fashion of King Henry VII.'s time, moored just out of the fair-way. A handsome vessel she must have been once, but was dismasted and plainly very old. I noted this to Mr. Drake.

'Ay,' he said, 'she is old, but trim and staunch yet. They say Cabot sailed in her to the Indies once; the first man who touched the mainland, let the Spaniards say what they will. I know it, and Frank knows it, and so do my boys, and we are proud of it, as we ought to be, for he sailed from England in an English ship.'

'But why do you live there?' I asked.

'Well,' said he, 'I have a reason, and I may as well tell you now as later. I lived once near Tavistock, in beautiful Devon, on the banks of our sweet Tavy, and there I might be dwelling now, but that I began to smell the Word of God and know it from the stinking breath of the beast of Rome. Then the Lord sent me trials, which, I thank Him day and night, He gave me strength to bear. The Justices of Devon were, for the most part, very earnest for the old religion, and persecution grew hot for those who would not sign the Six Articles. I thank God I was one to whom He showed the filthy error of that first most pestilent and damnable doctrine concerning transubstantiation. For, look you, lad, they would have made us like unto themselves, who are worse than the cannibal savages of the Indies. They, in their devilish ignorance, do but eat the flesh of their enemies; but these, in their most pernicious self-will, would pretend to fill their lewd bellies with the flesh of their Redeemer. Even as I speak to you of it, lad, my words seem like poison that will blister my lips, and I shudder each time I think of it, that Christian men are found to set such wanton contumely upon their sweet Lord. Come what might, I was no man to sink my soul in the filth of such a hell-born superstition as that; so I rose up and fled from the destroyer hither to Kent, where I knew true men were to be found. Here God showed me yonder hulk, which I purchased with the store of money I had saved. There dwelt I in peace till, in the fulness of time, King Henry died, and the godly men who stood around the throne of his son made me a preacher to the Royal Navy. So I continued reaping plenteously in the harvest of the Lord, until Edward's death thrust England once more down into the black pit of papacy and superstition.'

'But the day has broken again, now,' I said, remembering his former words, and wishing to win him back to the genial mood from which he had talked himself. He had been getting more and more like a great boy as we neared the ship and he talked of his sons, and I was sorry to have made him gloomy by my foolish questions.

'So it has, lad, so it has,' he cried, looking up quickly with the twinkle in his eyes again. 'It is growing brighter every hour; you shall help to brighten it, with God's good will, and so shall Frank, so shall my boys. But here we are almost alongside. Ahoy! ahoy! ahoy!'

No one answered to his shout, but as we came close alongside we could hear a strange commotion in the waist of the ship, into which, however, we could not see.

'They are about it again,' said Mr. Drake, with a chuckle; 'my boys are.'

'About what?' asked I.

'Fighting!' replied Mr. Drake, with increasing pride and delight. 'I know the sound. My boys fight as much as any man's sons in all Rochester. Not many days pass without them getting about it.'

'But what do they fight about?' I asked.

'Don't bother your head with that,' replied Mr. Drake; 'they don't.'

With that we went aboard, and I saw the cause of all the hubbub. Stripped to the waist were two sturdy lads of about twelve and thirteen years of age. They were fighting furiously with their fists, to the great delight of nine other boys of all ages, varying from a little fellow not more than three years old to a lad of scarce less growth than the smaller of the two fighters. The onlookers were cheering each telling blow, and hounding on their brothers to further efforts. Each time the others shouted I noticed that the baby cried out too, as loudly as his little lungs would allow, and beat on the deck with an old sword-hilt, which seemed to be his favourite and only plaything.

'There, Master Festing,' said Mr. Drake to me, beaming all over his round face, 'there are boys for a father to be proud of. Well done, Jack! 'Tis Jack and Joe,' he went on. 'You could not have had better luck; they are pretty fighters both.'

My answer was drowned in a fresh shout from the boys as they caught sight of their father.

'Come on, dad, come on,' they cried. 'Jack is winning again, but you shall still see some good sport before 'tis ended.'

They crowded round Mr. Drake to drag him by his cloak to where the two boys were still belabouring each other. Thither I think he would have gone, for he seemed as excited over it as the baby, but just then a thin, weary-looking woman, with eyes red with weeping, came running out of the cabin in the poop, and took Mr. Drake wildly by the arm.

'Stop them, Ned,' she said, 'stop them, for God's sake; they have been fighting this hour. For what black sin has Heaven given me such sons?'

'Tut, tut,' answered Mr. Drake; 'would you have a nosegay of milksops to call you mother? Rejoice that God has given us sons with whom, when the time is come, we shall not fear to speak with our enemies in the gate.'

'I know, I know,' she pleaded again; 'but stop them, Ned, this once. Look at their bloody faces; and I am so a-weary. Frank would stop them if he were here.'

'Ay, though he loves to see them fight,' answered her husband; 'I think sometimes he cares too much for you, and not enough for the cause. Still, for his sake, I will stop them. Peace, lads, peace!' he cried then; 'enough for to-day. It has been well fought, but now I bring you a visitor. Look to him, while I shift my boots within.'

The boys ceased fighting instantly, and after wiping their faces they shook hands, and then came up to where Mr. Drake had left me with the rest. John Drake, being the eldest there, welcomed me, but in a way that fell a good deal short of good manners.

'Can you fight?' said he, with a contemptuous look at my black broadcloth doublet.

'I can fight with sword and buckler,' I answered, 'a little.'

'Then you are a gentleman?' asked Joe.

'Yes.'

'Frank is going to be a gentleman. He says so. He is going to make all of us gentlemen, too.'

'Who is Frank?' asked I.

'Don't you know Frank?' said Joe, while all the rest laughed at my ignorance. 'Frank is our brother, our eldest brother. He is a sailor now. He's 'prentice to a shipmaster, who trades to Zeeland and France. He will be a master soon, and have a ship of his own. He says so. And then he will sail with us against Calais, and win it back, and the Queen will make us gentlemen.'

'That is much to do, and will take some doing,' said I, smiling, I am afraid; for I could not but be merry over the way they spoke of what a poor smack-lad was going to do.

'What are you grinning at?' cried Jack, firing up in a moment. 'Do you doubt Frank will do what he says? Take that, then,' and he struck me a hard blow on the chest that made me reel again.

I am sorry it made me angry to be struck so, for I returned his blow so heartily that, being younger than I, he was spun over on the deck somewhat heavily. Yet I think he did not mind, for when he picked himself up from where he fell, he came to me quite quietly and felt my arm.

'Who would have guessed,' said he, 'that you could strike so shrewd a blow,—you with a pale face like that; but Frank could thrash you, and so he shall when he comes home, and then we will ask him to let you sail with us against Calais.'

I could not laugh at him any more, for I began to take a great liking to the sturdy lad, with his broad, flat face and curly hair, since I had knocked him down, and could quite forgive him for talking so big about his brother Frank.

'I am sorry I struck so hard,' said I.

'Nay, sir,' answered he, 'be not sorry. It is not every one can fell me like an ox, and besides, dad says England will want strong arms ere long. Won't she, dad?'

'Ay, that she will,' said Mr. Drake, who now came out from under the poop; 'and Mr. Festing will use his for her. But come to supper now.'

'Art going to be a soldier, lad?' he said to me, as soon as we were seated.

'I think I shall be scholar,' answered I. 'Sir Fulke says I am to go to Cambridge soon. It was my father's wish.'

'Well, he was a wise man,' said Mr. Drake, 'and doubtless knew best. But it seems to me that England will need pikes and swords sooner than books. Still, let that pass.'

'Don't let him be a scholar, dad,' said Jack. 'He must be a sailor, and sail with us to the Indies, and find new kingdoms, like the Spaniards, and bring back a cargo of gold and pearls. Tell him about the Indies, dad.'

So Mr. Drake, with a right good will, fell to talking of the wonders of the West, and we twelve boys sat round him, open-eyed, greedily devouring his words, while he spoke of the gilded king that was there, who ruled over mountains of gold; and of the Indians that hunted fish in the sea, as spaniels did rabbits; and of the great whelks that were three feet across; and of trees with leaves so big that one could cover a man, and almonds as large as a demi-culverin ball. I know not what other wonders he related, just as he heard them from the mariners who came thence, but we all grew greatly excited by his tales, and went to bed to dream things yet stranger than the truth.

Such was my first meeting with the Drake family, and fast friends we boys became, and though continually fighting amongst themselves for the lightest causes, they never offered to attack me again. Francis I never saw at this time. He was nearly always abroad, and when he returned it so happened that I could not get to see him. Still, whenever we got a day away from our grammar, Harry and I always slipped off with our crossbows, to sail with the Drakes in their boat and fish and shoot wild-fowl.

Those were our happiest days. So greatly did the Drake boys take to Harry, after a fight or two, and so much did we take to the sea, that all our old pleasures were forsaken, and the pigeons and the jackdaws were left in quiet possession of the crumbling old church.

Nor were Mr. Drake's stories of the West the least cause of our love for the Medway and that aged hulk. Harry was never tired of questioning the old navy preacher about it, and soon we began to worry our old tutor to tell us more.

For I must relate that I was now living almost entirely at Ashtead with Harry, that I might share with him the tutor whom Sir Fulke had secured for us. Poor old long-suffering Master Follet! How I wish I could know thee now! Surely when I look back to those days of patience, I know thou must have been the sweetest pedant that ever said his prayers to Aristotle. But then in my folly I knew thee not. I knew thee not for the gentle scholar thou wast, for the well-rounded compendium thou hadst made thyself of that old learning which is fast passing away,—the old, pure learning, which a man could seek so pleasantly when learning was books and naught but books, and he who knew them best was accounted wisest.

If Eve had not tempted nor Adam sinned, God might have given us that richest gift—to see the hours of our youth, as they pass, with the eyes that we look back upon them withal when they are gone. Alas! such wit I lacked and knew thee not, my gentle master, nor the hours in which I was free to rifle the treasure-house of thy polished wisdom. Had I but known, I might have tasted, ere they were yet dead, the sweets of those days when he who sought wisdom and would be accounted wise might sit out his life in the window-seat of his library, drinking in the voice of the mighty dead, while the world without glimmered softly in through the painted lattices upon the folio before him, and wandered thence to kiss its sister volumes sleeping in the shelves.

Now that has changed, with much besides. Now must not a scholar be content with the light that comes softened and tender-hued through a library window if he would pass for wise amongst men. Now must he plunge out into the day and seek for the new wisdom amongst the haunts of thronging men, where the sunlight beats fierce and bright upon the world to show to him who fears not all its beauty, and all its baseness too.

Such wisdom was not our tutor's portion, and his want of it, instead of increasing our love for him, as now it would, was our chief ground of difference. We each day grew more full of the wonders of the West, not alone from what Mr. Drake told us, but also from what we heard direct from mariners, with whom groats could win us speech in Chatham and Rochester.

Well I remember how he answered when, having drunk dry our other wells, we made bold to try what we could find in our tutor.

'I am glad, my boys,' said he, with an anxious look in his delicate, wizened face and clear, brown eyes, 'that you have come to me in your trouble; for I perceive you have been speaking with some ignorant fellows, who have filled your heads with the folly that is now everywhere afloat. Beware of it as you would beware the fiend. So strong is this madness that has seized on men, and even scholars (if indeed they still deserve the name), that in so great a place as Paris even Aristotle has been called in question.'

He looked at us as he said this, pausing long with uplifted eyebrows to watch the effect which this announcement, to him so terrible, would have on us. I did not know what to say, so prayed him civilly to proceed.

'You may well be pained,' he continued, though it must be said that I don't think we were at all, 'but you will rejoice to hear that these things will not continue long. I have here a goad which will soon drive these dull-witted cattle back to the right path.'

So saying he laid his hand on a bundle of manuscript, which we knew only too well, and leaning fondly over it read slowly, as though it were a sweetmeat in his mouth, the title-leaf at the top. Its name was in Greek, not because the work was written in that tongue, but merely out of a fashion used commonly amongst such men to increase their appearance of wisdom.

'It is a work,' the good old man said,—we had heard it a score of times before,—'upon which I am labouring, entituled, "'H Aristotéleia Apología; or, Ramus Ransacked, being a British Blast against Gaulish Gabies, wherein all the preposterous, fantastical opinions of late grown current amongst the Dunces of Paris are fully set forth, withstood, and refuted by Christoph: Follet." It begins with a sharp note against——'

'But, please you, sir,' Harry interrupted,—and I was glad he did, for I saw the old man was running out of his course, as he always did when he got astride his 'Apology,'—'were it not well first to show us how the knowledge of this New World, of which we were asking you, had so set things awry?'

'Knowledge of the New World, say you?' said our tutor, evidently a little pained. 'Know, my boys, there is no knowledge of this pretended New World. No man can know what does not exist: the New World does not exist, ergo, no man hath knowledge of it.'

'Far be it from me to dispute your syllogism,' said I, for logic was his chief delight to teach us, 'yet, saving your premises, I have many times spoken with them that have been there and seen it.'

'My boy, my boy,' answered Mr. Follet sadly, 'in what a perilous case do I find you! What hope can I have of your scholarship if you will set the eyes of moderns against the wits of the ancients? How can they have seen this New World of which they are so ready to prate? Had it existed, Aristotle would have written of it. Forget you for how many years, and for how many and great sages, the whole sum of human understanding has been contained within the compass of the writings of that great man, and will you seek to increase it by the babbling of drunken sailors?'

'But, please you,' said Harry, 'the honest mariners who told me were not drunk.'

'The greater liars they, then,' answered Mr. Follet, a little testily. 'Or rather, I should say, the more pitiable their ignorance; for let me not be carried beyond good manners, which are a sweet seasoning of scholarship too often forgotten nowadays in the dishes men compound of their wits.'

'Save you sir, for that most excellent conceited figure,' said Harry gravely; for the mad knave always knew how to bring his tutor back to a fair ambling pace when he grew restive.

'Well, lad, indeed I think it was not amiss,' answered Mr. Follet, with a complacent smile. 'It is an indifferent pretty trick I have, and one I could doubtless in some measure rear in you; but not if you suffer the vulgar to plant weeds in the gardens I am tilling with such labour, that I may in due course see you both bring forth a plenteous crop of the fruits of scholarship. If you have a desire to make yourself learned in cosmography, I myself, who have no small skill in it, will teach you. But listen no more to idle sailors' tales, whose only guide is experience, wherewith they foolishly seek to explain the hidden wonders of the world, seeing they have no skill to learn the truth from books.'

'Is it Aristotle, then, alone we must read?' asked Harry, a little disheartened at the prospect before us.

'I will not say that,' answered our tutor. 'Though for the wise the Stagirite is all-sufficient, yet it cannot be denied but that there be some authors who, having reverently and afar-off walked in the footsteps of the master, have in a manner amplified, extended, and explained, and as it were diluted his vast learning, so as to make it more palatable, medicinable, and digestible to the unlearned, such as you and Jasper. Therefore, because of your weakness, I would suffer you to read the works of Strabo, Seneca, and Claudius Ptolemæus, amongst the ancients; and among the moderns, the Speculum Naturale of Vicenzius Bellovacensis, the Liber Cosmographicus de Natura Locorum of Albertus Magnus, together with certain works of our own Roger Bacon; but these with circumspection, and under my guidance, seeing he was a speculator who erred not from too little boldness, or too great respect for Aristotle.'

With this we had to rest content, though I think Harry found little comfort in it, seeing that his love for books was never so great as mine. As for me, I laid aside my Plutarch, and devoured greedily all my tutor advised. Nor did I stop there; for, rummaging in the library at home, I found other works on cosmography, such as the Imago Mundi of Honoré d'Autun, and that of Cardinal Alliacus, together with not a few others which some abbot of the later times had collected, being, as I imagine, interested in the science.

In these I read constantly, and carried what I found there to Mr. Drake and his boys, and my friends amongst the sailors. Hour by hour I told them of the dread ocean, where was eternal night, with storms that never ceased; of the magic island of Antilia or Atlantis; of the marvellous hill in Trapobana, which had the property of drawing the nails from a ship which sailed near it, and so wrecking it; and, above all, of the Earthly Paradise, of which I loved best to muse.

Again and again I poured into their wondering ears the tale of that blessed land which lay beyond the Indies, the first region of the East, where the world begins and heaven and earth are hand in hand; the land where is raised on high a sanctuary which mortals may not enter, and which everlasting bars of fire have closed since he who first sinned was driven forth. I told them of the wonders of that land; how in it there was neither heat nor cold, and four great rivers went forth to fill the place with all manner of sweetness and water the Wood of Life, the tree whereof if any man eat the fruit he shall continue for everlasting and unchanged.

Some laughed at me, saying I was blinded by too much book-learning, but most of the mariners, and especially Drake's boys, listened with great respect, caring little, as I think, after the manner of seafaring folk, whether the tales they heard were true or not, so long as they were strange.