The Armourer's House Page 4

  Piers laughed, but kindly, and said, ‘No, I’m afraid I couldn’t do that.’ He stopped for a moment, and then he said, ‘You see, Father’s a very good armourer – about the best in London – and the shop means a lot to him: not only the shop, I mean, but making beautiful things; armour and weapons are like jewels and paintings to Father. Kit was to have joined him in the shop, and taken it on when Father was old. Kit always wanted that, as I always wanted to go to sea; but of course after he was drowned I had to try to take his place. Father would let me go if I asked him, but it isn’t as though Giles cared a straw about the armoury, and anyway, I’m the eldest, so it really had to be me. I couldn’t ever ask Father to let me go.’

  ‘N-no,’ said Tamsyn, ‘I s’pose not.’ But she said it rather doubtfully.

  And Piers said, ‘Oh, I don’t expect I’ll mind a bit when I’m old like Father. And I’m good at making things. I’ll be a good armourer one day, you’ll see. I’ll make armour as light and strong and beautiful as the armourers of Nuremberg and Milan. I’ll forge sword-blades of blue steel that you can bend in a circle with one finger, and damascene them with gold and silver so that people will buy my blades, instead of sending to the swordsmiths of Toledo.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Tamsyn, and then, ‘how nice.’ But she knew that Piers was only talking to comfort himself; so she said, ‘Please – perhaps one day something ’strordinary will happen, so you’ll be able to go to sea after all.’

  Piers said, ‘Perhaps.’ And then he got up off the play-chest and stood rocking gently on his heels and staring out of the window away across the river – which was all running gold in the sunset light – and talking very fast indeed, while Tamsyn sat quite still and watched him with her mouth and eyes very wide open. He had gone quite white across the bridge of his nose, so that the freckles stood out blacker than ever. That always happened to Piers when he minded very deeply about anything. But somehow he didn’t seem ugly any more, in spite of his freckles and his ears. He didn’t seem a bit like the quiet, workaday Piers at all, because the exciting part of him that Tamsyn had been so sure was there, hidden underneath where it did not show, was suddenly shining through. He talked of new seas to be sailed and new lands to be discovered and explored, and how one day English seamen would sail round the Cape of Storms and see the glories of Cathay, and westward to explore the wonders of the New World. How the Portuguese had had all the trade with India in their hands for five hundred years, and the Spaniards were trying to claim for themselves the Americas and all the trade routes to the west; but how the day was coming when the English would be masters of the seas, and the trade routes would be free to the shipping of all the nations, and there would be no blue water from Mexico to Cathay, and Cathay round again to the Gulf of Darien, that was not sailed by English ships and English seamen.

  Then quite suddenly he stopped talking, and stood looking down at Tamsyn in the last golden light of the sunset; and he said rather gruffly, ‘You’ll not tell about all this, will you, Tamsyn? You’re good at secrets.’

  And Tamsyn slid off the toy-chest and stood very straight, with her hands folded in front of her, and stared up at him. ‘I wouldn’t tell a single word,’ she said, ‘not if they cut me in little bits, I wouldn’t.’

  Piers went on looking down at her as though he were making quite sure that he could trust her. Then he said, ‘Have you ever seen a chart of the New World?’

  ‘No,’ said Tamsyn.

  ‘Would you like to?’

  ‘Please, yes,’ said Tamsyn. ‘Oh, please, yes.’

  ‘Wait here, then,’ and he turned and went away down Kit’s Castle into the shadows that had begun to gather at the far end, and disappeared into the cubby-hole which he shared with Giles. In a little while he came back, carrying something rolled up in one hand, and a flaring rushlight in a brass pricket in the other, and the long attic changed from grey to golden at his coming.

  ‘I brought a candle, because it’s getting too dark to see properly,’ he said, putting the pricket down on the top of an apple-barrel.

  Tamsyn bundled across the creaking floor into the golden glow of the rushlight where Piers was sitting on his heels unrolling the rolled-up something; and she sat down on her heels too, beside him, and folded her hands in her leaf-green lap, and looked at him with her head a little on one side, like a puppy that hopes you are going to throw a ball for it. Tamsyn always looked like that when she was interested. Piers finished unrolling the something and laid it down flat and put all the things in his wallet on to the corners to keep it from rolling up again.

  Then he said, ‘Look, Tamsyn.’

  And Tamsyn looked.

  It was a most lovely chart. There were both the Americas joined together like a pair of spectacles, with clear blue sea lapping all round them. Places were marked on the land; Brazil, which Master William Hawkins of Plymouth had explored only four years ago; and Pern, and Darien, and many more. There were broad rivers and wide plains, chains of snow-capped mountains, and people in strange bird head-dresses, black bears and milk-white deer fleeing through forests of pointed trees whose branches were full of gay, long-tailed birds, fire-breathing serpents, and little men with bows and arrows in their hands, and their heads set in the middle of their chests. The land was lovely, but the sea was lovelier. There were little, scalloped waves in the sea, and the tiny, jewel-bright islands of the West Indies, with names that seemed to sing themselves like a rhyme, when Piers read them over to her, very quietly – Cuba and Jamaica, Hispaniola, Tobago, Marguerite, Grenada. There was the golden sun in one corner and the silver moon in another, and a queer, complicated, cross-shaped pattern with its four points marked N, S, E, and W. There were sea-serpents too, and little gay dolphins among the waves; and, loveliest of all, there was a ship – bigger than the sun and moon, but hardly as big as a walnut shell, and Tamsyn’s heart went out to her the moment she saw her. She was such a gallant little ship, with small, proud castles, and a tiny blue dolphin under her bowsprit for a figurehead, and her bulwarks were gay with painted shields not so big as Tamsyn’s little finger-nail, and her pennants streamed scarlet and blue from her mastheads, and her sails were full of wind as she sped over the scalloped waves towards the green-and-golden shores of the New World.

  Tamsyn looked at everything in the golden glimmer of the rushlight; but most of all she looked at the proud little ship. ‘Did you make the chart?’ she whispered at last.

  ‘Sebastian Cabot made it first,’ said Piers. ‘Only much bigger, of course, and without the place-names; and quite a lot of the rich merchants have copies of it. Master Roger Whitcome has one, and he let me copy it myself, in the evenings after school. I-I thought I should need it, you see. It was before Kit was drowned.’

  Tamsyn looked up at Piers and gave her head a small, sorry shake. And then she looked down again at the lovely, sparkling little ship. Somehow she didn’t want that ship to have been made by Sebastian Cabot, though he was such a great seaman and had helped to discover the West Indies. So she said beseechingly, ‘And the little ship?’

  ‘I made the Dolphin for myself,’ said Piers.

  ‘You’ve given her topgallant sails,’ said Tamsyn.

  And Piers looked up at her quickly, and said, ‘What do you know about topgallant sails, Baby?’

  ‘The Joyous Venture is going to carry them,’ explained Tamsyn. ‘Uncle Martin says one day every ship will carry topgallant sails. Did you call her Dolphin because of the nice little dolphins in front of the house?’

  ‘In a way,’ said Piers. ‘But I think I should have called her Dolphin anyway; there’s something exciting and joyful and gloriously adventurous about a dolphin. You see what I mean?’

  Tamsyn saw exactly what he meant, and she said, ‘It’s really just the same as Uncle Martin calling his ship the Joyous Venture!’

  ‘Yes,’ said Piers, in a quick sort of way. And then he said, ‘Ye-es,’ again, in a considering sort of way, and took a little bit of sharpened lead out of his wal
let, and said, ‘we’ll give her a new name, and write it under her, for a secret between you and me. It’s rather a long one; but lots of ships have names just as long, like the Peter and Pomegranate and the Catherine Bonaventure.’ And he drew a little scroll with a flourish at both ends, under the ship, while Tamsyn leaned forward breathlessly to watch him, and in the scroll he wrote very carefully, ‘Dolphin and Joyous Venture’.

  ‘There,’ he said, when it was done. ‘I’ll paint it in properly later on.’

  Tamsyn said very softly, ‘Dolphin and Joyous Venture. It’s the beautifullest name!’

  And the little ship seemed to like her new name, too, and all her gay pennants fluttered in the fluttering candle-light, and the little dolphin under the bowsprit arched his back even more joyously than before.

  Then Piers began to tell Tamsyn about the New World. People did not know very much about the Americas in those days, because so few people had been there yet, and that was what made it all so wonderfully exciting. There might be anything – simply anything – in those great hidden lands: cities of gold for golden Kings and Queens and golden Priests of the Sun, new races of white people, mountains whose tops pricked the starry sky, dragons and salamanders and snow-white unicorns. Nobody knew. The few people who had been there, just as far as the borders, had brought back stories; and the people who hadn’t been there at all, listened to them and made up more for themselves without quite knowing that they were making them up, and so the stories grew more and more wonderful and fantastic. Piers was good at stories, and when his heart was in anything he could always make it come alive for other people, if he wanted to. He made the New World come so alive for Tamsyn that she seemed to be on the deck of the ship no larger than a walnut shell, sailing over blue seas capped with little frilled white waves and full of leaping dolphins and rainbow-winged flying fish, into the Golden West. As it grew darker, even the shadows seemed to be crowding out from the corners of Kit’s Castle, to throng round the edge of the candle-shine and sit on their heels and listen because they liked stories too; and after a while, a tiny, russet-furred mouse crept out from behind the old side-saddle, and sat up to listen among the shadows, with his whiskers twitching and his eyes bright as stars.

  But Tamsyn didn’t see the mouse, or the shadows; she was off and away with Piers, following broad rivers and climbing tremendous ranges of blue mountains in search of the unknown – hidden lands, golden cities, fresh trade for England. Great trees swept high above their heads, with strange birds of white and pink and crimson darting and calling among the flowering branches, while the Dolphin and Joyous Venture lay waiting in deep bays for their return.

  Presently, as if from a very long way off, she heard Aunt Deborah calling, ‘Tamsyn, where are you? Bedtime, poppet!’ And the bright birds and the rushing rivers were gone in a flash, and Tamsyn was back in Kit’s Castle, sitting on her heels in the yellow glow of the rushlight, beside Piers, with the lovely chart spread out before them, and Piers was looking at her in his quiet, half-smiley way. The shadows stole back to their corners, and the mouse gave a whisk of his tail and was gone down his hole behind the old side-saddle before anyone knew that he had been there at all; and one silver star was hanging low out of a clear green sky to look in at Piers and Tamsyn and see what had interested them so much. For Kit’s Castle was very near the stars, especially when people made magic in it.

  ‘Tamsyn!’ called Aunt Deborah again; and Tamsyn gave a little sigh, and a little wriggle, and called back, ‘Coming, Aunt Deborah,’ and got up. ‘I must go,’ she said sadly.

  Piers rolled up the map and uncurled his long legs and got up too, giving his shoulders a little shake, as though he were shaking off the magic that he had made. ‘Good-night, Tamsy,’ he said.

  Tamsyn bobbed him a good-night curtsy. ‘It was lovely, Piers. And may I see the little ship again one day?’

  Piers gave her a grave little bow in return for the curtsy. ‘Of course,’ he said. Are you not her part-owner?’

  ‘Am I?’ said Tamsyn. ‘How nice.’ And then she smiled suddenly, and said, ‘Good-night,’ and ‘Thank you,’ and pattered away down the circular stairway to Aunt Deborah and bed.

  3

  May Day and Morris Dancers

  Tamsyn was a much happier person after the evening when the Dolphin and Joyous Venture got her name; and she was not nearly so homesick. Telling Piers about it had made all the difference, and she did not feel lonely or un-belonging any more, because she had made a friend and had a secret to share with him. Quite soon she began to feel that she belonged to the rest of the family too, which was a very comfortable thing to feel. Then she began to like London; it was not like her own dear countryside, of course; but it was nice, all the same.

  In those days cities were not at all like they are now. They were small and compact and cosy, like a tit’s nest. The houses were cuddled close together inside their city walls, with the towers of their cathedrals standing over them to keep them safe from harm. London was like that. As you came towards it, up the Strand from Westminster or over the meadows from Hampstead, you could see the towers and spires and steep roofs of the City rising above its protecting walls as gay as flowers in a flower-pot; and when you had passed through the gates (there were eight fine gates to London Town), the streets were narrow and crooked and very dirty, but bright with swinging shop-signs and hurrying crowds. And the shops under the brilliant signs were as gay as fairground booths, with broidered gloves and silver hand-mirrors, jewels to hang in ladies’ ears, baskets of plaited rushes, coifs of bone lace, wooden cradles hung with little golden bells for wealthy babies. Other shops sold the rare and lovely things from overseas that were still new to the English people–Venetian goblets as fine as soap-bubbles, pale eastern silks, strange spices for rich men’s tables, and musk in little flasks for people to make themselves smell nice. But if you wanted ordinary things, such as food or preserving pans, you went to Cheapside or some other market; and if you wanted herbs you went to the herb market, which was really one of the loveliest places in London, because most flowers and green things counted as herbs in those days.

  The street of the Dolphin House was one of the nicest streets in London. It was a very busy street, full of a great coming and going that went on all the daylight hours, so that there was always something to watch from the windows. Perhaps that was why the windows of the Dolphin House always looked so interested. Brown-clad monks, and church carvers and candle-makers, merchants and yet more merchants, and jewellers and silversmiths, and sailors everywhere–more sailors every day, it seemed to Tamsyn. All these came and went along the street, and sometimes a great lord would ride by on a tall horse, or a lady with winged sleeves of golden gauze and servants running ahead to clear the way for her. Strolling players often passed that way, too, on their way from Ludgate to the Fountain Tavern, where they acted their plays; and Morris Dancers, or a performing bear led by a little boy, or a man with a cadge of hawks for sale. Once a baker who had sold short-weight bread was drawn through the street sitting on a hurdle with the short-weight loaf tied round his neck, and half the little boys of London running behind in a joyful sort of way and throwing things. Oh, it was a very exciting street, and as the weeks went by, Tamsyn began to like it very much indeed.

  There was a great coming and going in the Dolphin House too. All through the day-time people came to buy a sword or order a pair of mail gauntlets or perhaps even a whole suit of armour; great lords of the Court, and squires who were not great at all, and once the Lord High Admiral of England. And in the evening, when the working day was over, the other Master Craftsmen and merchants who were friends of Uncle Gideon’s would often call in. They would sit round the polished table in the parlour and talk of Florentine velvets and damascened sword-blades and trade routes, the glories of the New World, and the demand for cinnamon. On such evenings Piers would sit near by, if he could manage it without being noticed, and listen, with his ugly face cupped in his hands, his eyes looking as tho
ugh he was seeing things a long way off.

  Well, so the spring drew on, and the quince tree at the bottom of the Dolphin House garden uncurled new green leaves that were like jets of emerald flame in the sunshine, and it was May Day.

  Tamsyn woke up in the great bed with the blue curtains which she no longer minded sharing with Beatrix, while it was still quite dark on May Day morning, and heard two people creeping downstairs very stealthily in their stockinged feet. Just for a moment she held her breath and tingled all over. Then she remembered that it was May Day morning, and Piers and Timothy would be going out to bring home the May! So she began to breathe again, but she went on tingling all over because it was so exciting to feel that it was May Day. She did wish that she was going with Piers and Timothy and all the other people who would be streaming out to the woods and fields to see the sunrise and bring home the May. She could not think how Beatrix could go on sleeping like a dormouse, when it was May Day morning, and was just wondering whether or not she would shake her to wake her up, when suddenly she found that she had been to sleep again herself and the sun was poking golden fingers slantwise across the window.

  It was a lovely morning, with a holiday feeling in the air that made Littlest even more difficult to dress than usual, because he wanted to jump like a frog all the time, instead of only now and then, and kicked joyously while Tamsyn was trying to brace up his hose. But they got him dressed at last, and just as they had finished, they heard a great noise of singing and shouting in the street.

  ‘It’s the May!’ squealed Beatrix. ‘They’re bringing home the May.’ And they all ran to the window and leaned out, the girls keeping a firm hold on Littlest’s doublet to make sure he didn’t fall into the street on his head.