In the Master Printer Badge's house--and he was the uncle of Margot and of the young Poins--there was a great and solemn dissertation towards. For word had been brought that certain strangers come on an embassy from the Duke of Cleves were minded to hear how the citizens of London--or at any rate those of them that held German doctrines--bore themselves towards Schmalkaldnerism and the doctrines of Luther.
It was understood that these strangers were of very high degree--of a degree so high that they might scarce be spoken to by the meaner sort. And for many days messengers had been going between the house of the Archbishop at Lambeth and that of the Master Printer, to school him how this meeting must be conducted.
His old father was by that time dead--having died shortly after his granddaughter Margot had been put away from the Queen's Court--so that the house-place was clear. And of all the old furnishings none remained. There were presses all round the wall, and lockers for men to sit upon. The table had been cleared away into the printer's chapel; a lectern stood a-midmost of the room, and before the hearth-place, in the very ingle, there was set the great chair in which aforetimes the old man had sat so long.
Early that evening, though already it was dusk, the body of citizens were assembled. Most of them had haggard faces, for the times were evil for men of their persuasion, and nearly all of them were draped in black after the German fashion among Lutherans of that day. They ranged themselves on the lockers along the wall, and with set faces, in a funereal row, they awaited the coming of this great stranger. There were no Germans amongst them, for so, it was given out, he would have it--either because he would not be known by name or for some other reason.
The Master Printer, in the pride of his craft, wore his apron. He stood in the centre of the room facing the hearth-place; his huge arms were bare--for bare-armed he always worked--his black beard was knotted into little curls, his face was so broad that you hardly remarked that his nose was hooked like an owl's beak. And about the man there was an air of sombreness and mystery. He had certain papers on his lectern, and several sheets of the great Bible that he was then printing by the Archbishop's license and command. They sang all together and with loud voices the canticle called 'A Refuge fast is God the Lord.'
Then, with huge gestures of his hands, he uttered the words--
'This is the very word of God,' and began to read from the pages of his Bible. He read first the story of David and Saul, his great voice trembling with ecstasy.
'This David is our King,' he said. 'This Saul that he slew is the Beast of Rome. The Solomon that cometh after shall be the gracious princeling that ye wot of, for already he is wise beyond his years and beyond most grown men.'
The citizens around the walls cried 'Amen.' And because the strangers tarried to come, he called to his journeymen that stood in the inner doorway to bring him the sheets of the Bible whereon he had printed the story of Ehud and Eglon.
'This king that ye shall hear of as being slain,' he cried out, 'is that foul bird the Kaiser Carl, that harries the faithful in Almain. This good man that shall slay him is some German lord. Who he shall be we know not yet; maybe it shall be this very stranger that to-night shall sit to hear us.'
His brethren muttered a low, deep, and uniform prayer that soon, soon the Lord should send them this boon.
But he had not got beyond the eleventh verse of this history before there came from without a sound of trumpets, and through the windows the light of torches and the scarlet of the guard that, it was said, the King had sent to do honour to this stranger.
'Come in, be ye who ye may!' the printer cried to the knockers at his door.
There entered the hugest masked man that they ever had seen. All in black he was, and horrifying and portentous he strode in. His sleeves and shoulders were ballooned after the German fashion, his sword clanked on the tiles. He was a vision of black, for his mask that appeared as big as another man's garment covered all his face, though they could see he had a grey beard when sitting down. He gazed at the fire askance.
He said--his voice was heavy and husky--
'Gruesset Gott,' and those of the citizens that had painfully attained to so much of that tongue answered him with--
'Lobet den Herr im Himmels Reich!'
He had with him one older man that wore a half-mask, and was trembling and clean-shaven, and one younger, that was English, to act as interpreter when it was needed. He was clean-shaven, too, and in the English habit he appeared thin and tenuous. They said he was a gentleman of the Archbishop's, and that his name was Lascelles.
He opened the meeting with saying that these great strangers were come from beyond the seas, and would hear answers to certain questions. He took a paper from his pouch and said that, in order that he might stick to the points that these strangers would know of, he had written down those questions on that paper.
'How say ye, masters?' he finished. 'Will ye give answers to these questions truly, and of your knowledge?'
'Aye will we,' the printer said, 'for to that end we are gathered here. Is it not so, my masters?'
And the assembly answered--
'Aye, so it is.'
Lascelles read from his paper:
'How is it with this realm of England?'
The printer glanced at the paper that was upon his lectern. He made answer--
'Well! But not over well!'
And at these words Lascelles feigned surprise, lifting his well-shapen and white hand in the air.
'How is this that ye say?' he uttered. 'Are ye all of this tale?'
A deep 'Aye!' came from all these chests. There was one old man that could never keep still. He had huge limbs, a great ruffled poll of grizzling hair, and his legs that were in jerkins of red leather kicked continuously in little convulsions. He peered every minute at some new thing, very closely, holding first his tablets so near that he could see only with one eye, then the whistle that hung round his neck, then a little piece of paper that he took from his poke. He cried out in a deep voice--'Aye! aye! Not over well. Witchcraft and foul weather and rocks, my mates and masters all!' so that he appeared to be a seaman--and indeed he traded to the port of Antwerp, in the Low Countries, where he had learned of some of the Faith.
'Why,' Lascelles said, 'be ye not contented with our goodly King?'
'Never was a better since Solomon ruled in Jewry,' the shipman cried out.
'Is it, then, the Lords of the King's Council that ye are discontented with?'
'Nay, they are goodly men, for they are of the King's choosing,' one answered--a little man with a black pill-hat.
'Why, speak through your leader,' the stranger said heavily from the hearth-place. 'Here is too much skimble-skamble.' The old man beside him leaned over his chair-back and whispered in his ear. But the stranger shook his head heavily. He sat and gazed at the brands. His great hands were upon his knees, pressed down, but now and again they moved as if he were in some agony.
'It is well that ye do as the Lord commandeth,' Lascelles said; 'for in Almain, whence he cometh, there is wont to be a great order and observance.' He held his paper up again to the light. 'Master Printer, answer now to this question: Find ye aught amiss with the judges and justices of this realm?'
'Nay; they do judge indifferent well betwixt cause and cause,' the printer answered from his paper.
'Or with the serjeants, the apparitors, the collectors of taxes, or the Parliament men?'
'These, too, perform indifferent well their appointed tasks,' the printer said gloomily.
'Or is it with the Church of this realm that ye find fault?'
'Body of God!' the stranger said heavily.
'Nay!' the printer answered, 'for the supreme head of that Church is the King, a man learned before all others in the law of God; such a King as speaketh as though he were that mouthpiece of the Most High that the Antichrist at Rome claimeth to be.'
'Is it, then, with the worshipful the little Prince of Wales that ye are discontented?' Lascelles read, and the printer answered that there was not such another Prince of his years for promise and for performance, too, in all Christendom.
The stranger said from the hearth-place--
'Well! we are commended,' and his voice was bitter and ironical.
'How is it, then,' Lascelles read on, 'that ye say all is not over well in the land?'
The printer's gloomy and black features glared with a sudden rage.
'How should all be well with a land,' he cried, 'where in high places reigns harlotry?' He raised his clenched fist on high and glared round upon his audience. 'Corruption that reacheth round and about and down till it hath found a seedbed even in this poor house of my father's? Or if it is well with this land now, how shall it continue well when witchcraft rules near the King himself, and the Devil of Rome hath there his emissaries.'
A chitter of sound came from his audience, so that it appeared that they were all of a strain. They moved in their seats; the shipman cried out--
'Ay! witchcraft! witchcraft!'
The huge bulk of the stranger, black and like a bull's, half rose from its chair.
'Body of God!' he cried out. 'This I will not bear.'
Again the older man leaned solicitously above him and whispered, pleading with his hands, and Lascelles said hastily--
'Speak of your own knowledge. How should you know of what passes in high places?'
'Why!' the printer cried out, 'is it not the common report? Do not all men know it? Do not the butchers sing of it in the shambles, and the bot-flies buzz of it one to the other? I tell you it is spread from here into Almain, where the very horse-sellers are a-buzz with it.'
In his chair the stranger cried out--
'Ah! ah!' as if he were in great pain. He struggled with his feet and then sat still.
'I have heard witnesses that will testify to these things,' the printer said. 'I will bring them here into this room before ye.' He turned upon the stranger. 'Master,' he said, 'if ye know not of this, you are the only man in England that is ignorant!'
The stranger said with a bitter despair--
'Well, I am come to hear what ye do say!'
So he heard tales from all the sewers of London, and it was plain to him that all the commonalty cried shame upon their King. He screamed and twisted there in his chair at the last, and when he was come out into the darkness he fell upon his companion, and beat him so that he screamed out.
He might have died--for, though the King's guard with their torches and halberds were within a bowshot of them, they stirred no limb. And it was a party of fellows bat-fowling along the hedges of that field that came through the dark, attracted by the glare of the torches, the blaze of the scarlet clothes, and the outcry.
And when they came, asking why that great man belaboured this thin and fragile one, black shadows both against the light, the big man answered, howling--
'This man hath made me bounden to slay my wife.'
They said that that was a thing some of them would have been glad of.
But the great figure cast itself on the ground at the foot of a tree that stretched up like nerves and tentacles into the black sky. He tore the wet earth with his fingers, and the men stood round him till the Duke of Norfolk, coming with his sword drawn, hunted them afar off, and they fell again to beating the hedges to drive small birds into their nets.
For, they said, these were evidently of the quality whose griefs were none of theirs.
