The Armourer's House Read online

  There was a great throng of people pouring up the street in their gayest holiday clothes, shouting and singing as they came, and carrying great branches of flowering May and armfuls of bluebells and golden Mary-buds, so that the whole street seemed full of the spring and sunshine and happiness. On they came, laughing, singing, shouting and waving their flowering branches, and at each door in the street people dropped out of the throng and began to set up the May branches above the lintel.

  ‘They’re almost here,’ shrieked Beatrix. ‘Let’s go down and meet them.’ And next instant Giles came cascading downstairs from Kit’s Castle, yelling and whooping, with Bunch barking at his heels, and they all dashed down into the workshop together, hauling Littlest with them.

  They got to the front door and tore it open just as the lovely cavalcade came dancing past, and all the narrow street was full of laughter and tossing flowers and swirling skirts, and Littlest began to prance joyfully in the doorway, while the girls held tight to his hands. Then Piers and Timothy dropped out of the tail of the throng, each carrying a great branch of May thick with creamy blossom, and Tamsyn and Littlest and Bunch and the Almost-Twins all ran out to help them decorate the Dolphin House doorway.

  After that, the day seemed depressingly ordinary for a bit; work went on much as usual in the workshop, and Beatrix and Tamsyn had to do their lessons, and Giles went very unwillingly to school, and after dinner Uncle Gideon went out on business taking Timothy with him. But quite soon after that, Aunt Deborah said she had run out of saffron and they must go shopping and get some more. She had not really run out of saffron at all; there was plenty in the blue earthenware jar with yellow and white flowers on it in the store cupboard; but Aunt Deborah, in spite of her lovely tall figure and high-piled hair, was not really a very grown-up person, and she wanted to see the merry-makings quite as much as the children did.

  So she and Beatrix and Tamsyn and Littlest all set out. Aunt Deborah was the only one with a basket, because one basket is enough when you are only going to buy an ounce of saffron and don’t really mind whether you buy it at all.

  London was very gay and pretty that afternoon. A great many people seemed not to be working because of it being May Day, and there were crowds everywhere, in their holiday clothes, and holiday moods to match, laughing and shouting, singing and quarrelling, while their children and dogs played and fought all across the narrow streets. And every house they passed, from the great mansions of the richest folk to the little hovels of the poorest ones, was decked out with branches of hawthorn above the door. Some of the May branches had knots of spring flowers tied to them, some were sparkling with silver ribbons, some had only their own scented curds of blossom for beauty; but they were all lovely.

  They bought the saffron at the spicer’s, and then they decided they would go on just a little farther, before they turned home. Almost at once they met a man selling little gingerbread figures and striped sugar pigs; and Aunt Deborah said they could each have one, because of it being May Day, and she would have one too. So they each chose a sugar pig, and Beatrix put hers in her hanging pocket, because she was being Catherine of Aragon just then and felt it a little beneath her royal dignity to eat sugar pigs in the street. But nobody else had any dignity, and so they sucked joyfully. Tamsyn’s pig was striped pink and green.

  Then a swirl of music rose in the distance, shrill and sweet and coming nearer; and people came running to their doors and windows. ‘’Tis the Morris Dancers!’ cried someone, and everyone took up the cry. ‘The Morrisers! Way for the Morrisers!’ People pressed back against the walls of the houses, and squashed together in doorways and climbed on to window-sills and shop counters, all with their necks craned to look for the May dancers. Aunt Deborah picked Littlest up so that he should have a good view, while Beatrix and Tamsyn wriggled between a stout butcher in a blue smock and an old woman with a basket of spring cabbages on her arm, so that they, too, had a good view. The lovely, merry music came nearer and nearer, with swirling pipes and jingling bells; and then round the corner of the street came the Morris Dancers, led by their musicians with pipes and tabors, and all a-ring and a-chime and a-jingle with the little silver bells on their arms and legs and round their waists.

  First danced Maid Marian, who was the May Queen, too, for she wore a golden crown. She carried a crimson carnation in one hand, and her gown was purple and her kirtle green and her sleeves pink as May blossom; and Robin Hood danced beside her, all in green, with his bow in one hand and a gay peacock’s feather in his bonnet. Then the Fool, all in red and yellow, with cock’s comb flaunting and asses’ ears swinging on his fantastic hood, and a stick with a carved wooden fool’s head on top of it in his hand; and then Friar Hick, with his habit hitched up to show his red stockings and the bells around his ankles. There was Scarlet, too, and Stukely, and Little John–all Robin Hood’s men; and Jack-in-the-Green, who was a man bound round with green branches, so that he looked like a bush dancing along the street; and Tom Piper, with a feather in his crimson cap and a long wooden sword at his hip. And last of all came the Hobby-Horse, capering along behind the rest, a lovely, bright pink pasteboard horse with golden trappings and a rider in a cloak that was half blue and half yellow, whose feet appeared under the trappings, doing the most wonderful and complicated steps imaginable. On they went, dancing with queer, jerky steps that set their silver bells chiming like all the bells of Elfland; and behind them came a jostling, boisterous throng of girls and children, and prentice lads who should have been at work, and little boys who should have been at school, all out to enjoy themselves.

  Tamsyn longed to kilt up her skirts and go with them, following the shrill Morris Music, which made her feet dance just to hear it; but Aunt Deborah said, ‘Now we really must be getting home. Come along, poppets,’ and she put Littlest on his feet and shooed them all off down the street in the direction of home. And the jiggiting music and the jingling of the Morris bells died away behind them in the distance.

  But they had gone but a very little way when there began to be a new kind of noise in the City: an angry noise, quite like a long way behind them, and above the uproar Tamsyn could hear a sudden cry of ‘Clubs! Clubs!’

  ‘Oh, deary me!’ said Aunt Deborah, beginning to hurry a little. ‘There’s always trouble with the prentices on May Day, but it doesn’t usually start as early as this.’

  She had hardly finished speaking when the crowds in the street suddenly grew thicker than ever, as tall prentice lads came pouring out of shop doorways and went shouldering their way through the people in the direction of the distant shouting. They all carried stout cudgels, and looked very pleased and happy; and as they went they took up the cry, ‘Clubs! Clubs!’

  ‘Thank goodness we are nearly home,’ said Aunt Deborah. ‘Tamsyn, do come along, and stop looking behind you. You won’t see anything interesting – at least, you won’t if I can help it.’

  ‘Clubs! Clubs!’ shouted the shouldering prentices joyfully, and then, as word was passed back through the crowds, ‘Rescue Ned Buckel! Rescue Guildersleeve’s prentice! Clubs! Clubs! Clubs!’

  ‘I wonder whether it’s a battle with the Watch or only between two lots of prentices,’ said Beatrix. ‘I do hope it’s the Watch.’

  ‘Well, whichever it is,’ said Aunt Deborah, towing Littlest along by the hand rather faster than he wanted to go, ‘our two won’t be in it. Timothy is with Father at the other end of town, and Piers is much too quiet and steady.’

  For a little while nobody answered her, and then Beatrix announced tragically to no one in particular, ‘It’s so mortifying to have a brother who stays at home when they’re calling “Clubs” in the street. Kit would have gone at once. He liked fighting.’

  Aunt Deborah said, ‘Piers is a very good brother for anyone to have. Who drew pictures for you when you were ill, you nasty little girl? And who mends your things when you break them? Littlest, my lamb, will you pick your feet up. Besides, one fighter in a family is quite enough, and I’
m sure there’s hardly a week goes by that Giles doesn’t come home from school with a black eye or a torn jerkin.’

  But Beatrix only stuck her haughty nose in the air, and muttered, ‘I don’t care! I’d not stay at home working, while the other prentices were out fighting the Watch.’

  ‘If you say another word, Beatrix Caunter,’ shrieked Tamsyn, suddenly turning bright pink with fury, ‘I’ll hit you with my sugar pig–and it’s all sticky.’

  ‘Children! Children! Stop it at once,’ ordered Aunt Deborah, while a fresh burst of shouting arose in the distance: ‘Clubs! Clubs! Rescue Ned Buckle!’

  ‘Littlest go,’ said Littlest, and made a dive in the direction of the shouting.

  Aunt Deborah dropped the basket and grabbed him by the skirts of his doublet. ‘Littlest not go,’ she said.

  Then a queer thing happened; for Littlest, who was never cross or upset, sat down with a thump on the cobbles, and shut his eyes and opened his mouth and burst into a roar of tears. ‘Oh, deary me!’ said Aunt Deborah, quite comfortably. ‘Tamsyn, pick up my basket and carry it.’ And she scooped Littlest up from the cobbles, still yelling and with a face as scarlet and crumpled as a poppy-bud, tucked him under her arm and set off for home once more. Littlest was making so much noise that everybody turned round to stare at them as they passed, but Aunt Deborah did not seem to be at all put out. If you can imagine someone-in-a-stained-glass-win-dow-with-the-sun-shining-through-it carrying a bawling little boy under one arm and the remains of a striped sugar pig in the other hand, that is exactly how Aunt Deborah looked.

  They were in a narrow back-alley at the time, and in a little while they came out into a street, and the first thing they saw was Timothy dashing up it as fast as his long legs would carry him, in the direction of the battle.

  ‘Look!’ cried Beatrix and Tamsyn together, quite forgetting their quarrel in their surprise. ‘There’s Timothy!’

  ‘Oh, my goodness gracious me! He must have given Father the slip,’ said Aunt Deborah. ‘Ah well, he can but go to gaol for the night, and I daresay he will have plenty of company.’

  When they got home, there was no sign of Piers.

  ‘Us heard them calling “Clubs” in the streets, and off he went with the biggest mallet,’ old Caleb the swordsmith told them.

  Beatrix and Aunt Deborah stared at him with their mouths open, and even Littlest stopped yelling.

  ‘But he’s always so quiet,’ gasped Aunt Deborah, putting Littlest down with a thump that was almost like dropping him. ‘He’s never done such a thing before!’

  ‘There hasn’t been no prentice riots this end of the town since he left school, Mistress,’ said Caleb, ‘and ’tis often the quiet ones as makes the best fighters.’

  ‘And of course you didn’t think to stop him?’

  Old Caleb shook his head. ‘Nay, Mistress, we was all prentices ourselves once.’

  Aunt Deborah sat down on a clean space at the end of one of the work-benches and folded her hands in her lap. ‘Timothy has given the Master the slip,’ she said serenely, ‘for we saw him just now. I expect they’ll both go to gaol, and I shall go distracted, and you can all come and visit me in Bethlehem Hospital. That will be so nice.’

  And at that moment the street door opened again, and Uncle Gideon came in. He shut the door behind him, looked at his family and his workmen, and said in a very matter-of-fact sort of way, ‘Ah, I take it Piers is off, too.’

  But when Giles came home a little later, and Beatrix told him the extraordinary news, he was not at all matter of fact about it. He whistled in a very rude and astonished sort of way, and said condescendingly, ‘Poor old Piers! He’ll get chopped into little bits by that crowd–I don’t believe he knows how to hit anybody.’

  Then Littlest was put to bed, and soon after that the family sat down to supper, and as Piers and Timothy had not come home, Aunt Deborah put some by for them, without mentioning it to Uncle Gideon.

  But when supper was over and cleared away, and the Vesper bell was ringing from the Black Friar’s Monastery, and still there was no sign of them, Aunt Deborah went to the open window, and stood looking down into the crowded street. ‘I wonder where those two wicked boys have got to,’ she said, not worried exactly, but just a little anxious. ‘Surely they should be back by now.’

  Uncle Gideon glanced up from the book he was reading, and said, ‘Perhaps they are in gaol. Quite a lot of prentices will be, by this time, I expect. I shouldn’t worry if I were you, my dear.’

  At this, Beatrix flung her arms round her mother’s waist and cried tragically, ‘Piers is in gaol, and they’ll hang him in the morning. I know they will–or perhaps he’s weltering in his gore, and I scorned him.’

  But at that moment a new uproar started, faint at first, but coming nearer–a great noise of shouting and the faint shrill music of pipes and tabors. ‘Here come the Morris Dancers!’ cried someone in the street below, and, so fast that it seemed like magic, heads came poking out of windows and people came thronging out of doorways, all laughing and eager. ‘The Morrisers! The Morrisers!’

  The Dolphin House children all rushed to the window and scrambled on to the cushioned sill, leaning so far out that if they had leaned any farther they would all have fallen into the street. Luckily by that time the crowd was so thick that they would not have been at all likely to hurt themselves if they had, because a crowd is much softer to fall on than cobbles. Even Uncle Gideon got up, with one finger marking the place in his book, and came to stand in the deep oriel window to look out over the heads of his family.

  ‘Here they are!’ shouted Giles. ‘I say, they’ve got torches.’

  And they had. There was still some sunlight caught among the roof-tops, but the blue shadows were just beginning to gather in the street below, so that the torches shone like so many dandelions as they came bobbing along between the houses, and the golden crowns and silver bells of the dancers sparkling and shimmered with little flecks of coloured light in the most entrancing way. They were the same Morris Dancers that Tamsyn had seen that afternoon, but something very exciting seemed to have happened to them since then. They had a ragged and rather battered look about them, and Maid Marian had lost her carnation and her crown, and Jack-in-the-Green had lost all his leafy branches except one, which wagged exultantly behind him like a tail. But they were dancing more joyously than ever, in the cock-a-hoop sort of way that a conquering hero might dance on the way home from a battle, and they seemed to be singing and cheering a good deal, and they carried the Fool shoulder high among them. The Fool was shouting, ‘Cock-a-doodle doo! Cock-a-doodle-doo-o-o! Who broke the Alderman’s head?’ Robin Hood was holding an imaginary hunting-horn to his mouth and winding the most tremendous blasts on it; and altogether they had the look of a Triumphal Procession that is really enjoying itself.

  There were a great many prentices in the procession, milling along just as triumphantly as the Morris Dancers, and singing and thumping their friends on the head in the most cheerful way; more and more and more prentices, until it did not seem possible that there could be so many in all London Town. And right at the hindmost tail of the procession swaggered two figures which the Dolphin House family knew.

  ‘It’s Piers!’ shrieked Beatrix.

  ‘It’s Piers and Timothy!’ yelled Giles.

  ‘Go and bring those two up to me,’ said Uncle Gideon.

  The two figures dropped out at their own front door, and next instant Tamsyn and the Almost-Twins and Bunch had rushed from the room and gone cascading higgledy-piggledy downstairs to meet them. At the bottom of the stairs it was rather dark, and everybody got muddled up together so that nobody knew quite who it was they were falling over; but they got themselves sorted out at last, and climbed upstairs again into the parlour, where Aunt Deborah and Uncle Gideon were waiting for them.

  Then they all stood still and looked at each other. Timothy’s face seemed quite all right, but his jerkin was ripped off one shoulder; and Piers had a purple bruise
all along his cheek-bone and a split lip. But they both had an air of modest triumph about them.

  Uncle Gideon looked at Timothy’s shoulder and Piers’ face in a way that made them wriggle, and said, ‘Now that you have thought fit to return, Piers and Timothy, may I ask what you have to say for yourselves? Timothy first.’

  Timothy squirmed slightly inside his ragged clothes, and said, ‘Well, sir, it – it just – sort of – happened.’

  ‘I see,’ said Uncle Gideon. ‘Piers, have you anything to add to the very detailed account of your proceedings with which Timothy has just favoured us?’

  Piers said, ‘Well, sir, the Watch got one of Master Guildersleeve’s prentices for cracking Alderman Branby’s head with his fool’s-head stick – he was the Fool in the Morris Dance, you know. He said Alderman Bransby had taken off his cap to scratch his head, and when he saw his bald head shining in the sun he couldn’t resist it. Only he hit rather harder than he meant to, and Alderman Bransby didn’t like it.’

  ‘No,’ said Uncle Gideon. ‘I can imagine that he might not. Go on.’

  ‘Well, so the Watch got hold of him and were going to put him in the pillory, and the prentice who was Robin Hood led the others to the rescue at once, and a brush started, and they were calling Clubs in the street.’

  ‘And so you took my best mallet and went to answer the call.’

  ‘Yes, sir, but I’ve brought it back safely,’ said Piers.

  Uncle Gideon ignored this, and said, ‘I never thought that Timothy had any sense, but I must confess I thought that you had. I was mistaken.’

  Piers drew himself up and said, ‘I went for the honour of the house. You would not like it to be said that this was the only house in the City that didn’t send a prentice to help rescue Ned Buckle from the pillory.’

  ‘Of course, you were not to know that Timothy would contrive to – er – mislay me in Thames Street, and answer the call as well,’ said Uncle Gideon, and his voice was still very grave, but his mouth had begun to give little smiley twitches under his beard. ‘I quite see that you felt the honour of the house rested on your shoulders.’