CHAPTER XII. The Prince and his Deliverer.
As soon as Miles Hendon and the little prince were clear of the mob,
they struck down through back lanes and alleys toward the river. Their
way was unobstructed until they approached London Bridge; then they
ploughed into the multitude again, Hendon keeping a fast grip upon
the Prince’s--no, the King’s--wrist. The tremendous news was already
abroad, and the boy learned it from a thousand voices at once--“The King
is dead!” The tidings struck a chill to the heart of the poor little
waif, and sent a shudder through his frame. He realised the greatness
of his loss, and was filled with a bitter grief; for the grim tyrant who
had been such a terror to others had always been gentle with him. The
tears sprang to his eyes and blurred all objects. For an instant
he felt himself the most forlorn, outcast, and forsaken of God’s
creatures--then another cry shook the night with its far-reaching
thunders: “Long live King Edward the Sixth!” and this made his eyes
kindle, and thrilled him with pride to his fingers’ ends. “Ah,” he
thought, “how grand and strange it seems--_I am King_!”
Our friends threaded their way slowly through the throngs upon the
bridge. This structure, which had stood for six hundred years, and
had been a noisy and populous thoroughfare all that time, was a curious
affair, for a closely packed rank of stores and shops, with family
quarters overhead, stretched along both sides of it, from one bank of
the river to the other. The Bridge was a sort of town to itself; it
had its inn, its beer-houses, its bakeries, its haberdasheries, its food
markets, its manufacturing industries, and even its church. It
looked upon the two neighbours which it linked together--London
and Southwark--as being well enough as suburbs, but not otherwise
particularly important. It was a close corporation, so to speak; it was
a narrow town, of a single street a fifth of a mile long, its
population was but a village population and everybody in it knew all
his fellow-townsmen intimately, and had known their fathers and mothers
before them--and all their little family affairs into the bargain. It
had its aristocracy, of course--its fine old families of butchers, and
bakers, and what-not, who had occupied the same old premises for five
or six hundred years, and knew the great history of the Bridge from
beginning to end, and all its strange legends; and who always talked
bridgy talk, and thought bridgy thoughts, and lied in a long, level,
direct, substantial bridgy way. It was just the sort of population to
be narrow and ignorant and self-conceited. Children were born on the
Bridge, were reared there, grew to old age, and finally died without
ever having set a foot upon any part of the world but London Bridge
alone. Such people would naturally imagine that the mighty and
interminable procession which moved through its street night and day,
with its confused roar of shouts and cries, its neighings and bellowing
and bleatings and its muffled thunder-tramp, was the one great thing in
this world, and themselves somehow the proprietors of it. And so they
were, in effect--at least they could exhibit it from their windows, and
did--for a consideration--whenever a returning king or hero gave it a
fleeting splendour, for there was no place like it for affording a long,
straight, uninterrupted view of marching columns.
Men born and reared upon the Bridge found life unendurably dull and
inane elsewhere. History tells of one of these who left the Bridge at
the age of seventy-one and retired to the country. But he could only
fret and toss in his bed; he could not go to sleep, the deep stillness
was so painful, so awful, so oppressive. When he was worn out with it,
at last, he fled back to his old home, a lean and haggard spectre, and
fell peacefully to rest and pleasant dreams under the lulling music of
the lashing waters and the boom and crash and thunder of London Bridge.
In the times of which we are writing, the Bridge furnished ‘object
lessons’ in English history for its children--namely, the livid and
decaying heads of renowned men impaled upon iron spikes atop of its
gateways. But we digress.
Hendon’s lodgings were in the little inn on the Bridge. As he neared
the door with his small friend, a rough voice said--
“So, thou’rt come at last! Thou’lt not escape again, I warrant thee;
and if pounding thy bones to a pudding can teach thee somewhat, thou’lt
not keep us waiting another time, mayhap,”--and John Canty put out his
hand to seize the boy.
Miles Hendon stepped in the way and said--
“Not too fast, friend. Thou art needlessly rough, methinks. What is
the lad to thee?”
“If it be any business of thine to make and meddle in others’ affairs,
he is my son.”
“‘Tis a lie!” cried the little King, hotly.
“Boldly said, and I believe thee, whether thy small headpiece be sound
or cracked, my boy. But whether this scurvy ruffian be thy father
or no, ’tis all one, he shall not have thee to beat thee and abuse,
according to his threat, so thou prefer to bide with me.”
“I do, I do--I know him not, I loathe him, and will die before I will go
with him.”
“Then ’tis settled, and there is nought more to say.”
“We will see, as to that!” exclaimed John Canty, striding past Hendon to
get at the boy; “by force shall he--”
“If thou do but touch him, thou animated offal, I will spit thee like a
goose!” said Hendon, barring the way and laying his hand upon his sword
hilt. Canty drew back. “Now mark ye,” continued Hendon, “I took this
lad under my protection when a mob of such as thou would have mishandled
him, mayhap killed him; dost imagine I will desert him now to a worser
fate?--for whether thou art his father or no--and sooth to say, I think
it is a lie--a decent swift death were better for such a lad than life
in such brute hands as thine. So go thy ways, and set quick about it,
for I like not much bandying of words, being not over-patient in my
nature.”
John Canty moved off, muttering threats and curses, and was swallowed
from sight in the crowd. Hendon ascended three flights of stairs to his
room, with his charge, after ordering a meal to be sent thither. It
was a poor apartment, with a shabby bed and some odds and ends of old
furniture in it, and was vaguely lighted by a couple of sickly candles.
The little King dragged himself to the bed and lay down upon it, almost
exhausted with hunger and fatigue. He had been on his feet a good
part of a day and a night (for it was now two or three o’clock in the
morning), and had eaten nothing meantime. He murmured drowsily--
“Prithee call me when the table is spread,” and sank into a deep sleep
immediately.
A smile twinkled in Hendon’s eye, and he said to himself--
“By the mass, the little beggar takes to one’s quarters and usurps one’s
bed with as natural and easy a grace as if he owned them--with never
a by-your-leave or so-please-it-you, or anything of the sort. In his
diseased ravings he called himself the Prince of Wales, and bravely doth
he keep up the character. Poor little friendless rat, doubtless his
mind has been disordered with ill-usage. Well, I will be his friend;
I have saved him, and it draweth me strongly to him; already I love the
bold-tongued little rascal. How soldier-like he faced the smutty rabble
and flung back his high defiance! And what a comely, sweet and gentle
face he hath, now that sleep hath conjured away its troubles and its
griefs. I will teach him; I will cure his malady; yea, I will be his
elder brother, and care for him and watch over him; and whoso would
shame him or do him hurt may order his shroud, for though I be burnt for
it he shall need it!”
He bent over the boy and contemplated him with kind and pitying
interest, tapping the young cheek tenderly and smoothing back the
tangled curls with his great brown hand. A slight shiver passed over
the boy’s form. Hendon muttered--
“See, now, how like a man it was to let him lie here uncovered and fill
his body with deadly rheums. Now what shall I do? ’twill wake him to
take him up and put him within the bed, and he sorely needeth sleep.”
He looked about for extra covering, but finding none, doffed his doublet
and wrapped the lad in it, saying, “I am used to nipping air and scant
apparel, ’tis little I shall mind the cold!”--then walked up and down
the room, to keep his blood in motion, soliloquising as before.
“His injured mind persuades him he is Prince of Wales; ’twill be odd to
have a Prince of Wales still with us, now that he that _was_ the prince
is prince no more, but king--for this poor mind is set upon the one
fantasy, and will not reason out that now it should cast by the prince
and call itself the king. . . If my father liveth still, after these
seven years that I have heard nought from home in my foreign dungeon, he
will welcome the poor lad and give him generous shelter for my sake; so
will my good elder brother, Arthur; my other brother, Hugh--but I will
crack his crown an _he_ interfere, the fox-hearted, ill-conditioned
animal! Yes, thither will we fare--and straightway, too.”
A servant entered with a smoking meal, disposed it upon a small deal
table, placed the chairs, and took his departure, leaving such cheap
lodgers as these to wait upon themselves. The door slammed after him,
and the noise woke the boy, who sprang to a sitting posture, and shot
a glad glance about him; then a grieved look came into his face and he
murmured to himself, with a deep sigh, “Alack, it was but a dream, woe
is me!” Next he noticed Miles Hendon’s doublet--glanced from that to
Hendon, comprehended the sacrifice that had been made for him, and said,
gently--
“Thou art good to me, yes, thou art very good to me. Take it and put it
on--I shall not need it more.”
Then he got up and walked to the washstand in the corner and stood
there, waiting. Hendon said in a cheery voice--
“We’ll have a right hearty sup and bite, now, for everything is savoury
and smoking hot, and that and thy nap together will make thee a little
man again, never fear!”
The boy made no answer, but bent a steady look, that was filled with
grave surprise, and also somewhat touched with impatience, upon the tall
knight of the sword. Hendon was puzzled, and said--
“What’s amiss?”
“Good sir, I would wash me.”
“Oh, is that all? Ask no permission of Miles Hendon for aught thou
cravest. Make thyself perfectly free here, and welcome, with all that
are his belongings.”
Still the boy stood, and moved not; more, he tapped the floor once or
twice with his small impatient foot. Hendon was wholly perplexed. Said
he--
“Bless us, what is it?”
“Prithee pour the water, and make not so many words!”
Hendon, suppressing a horse-laugh, and saying to himself, “By all the
saints, but this is admirable!” stepped briskly forward and did the
small insolent’s bidding; then stood by, in a sort of stupefaction,
until the command, “Come--the towel!” woke him sharply up. He took up a
towel, from under the boy’s nose, and handed it to him without comment.
He now proceeded to comfort his own face with a wash, and while he was
at it his adopted child seated himself at the table and prepared to fall
to. Hendon despatched his ablutions with alacrity, then drew back the
other chair and was about to place himself at table, when the boy said,
indignantly--
“Forbear! Wouldst sit in the presence of the King?”
This blow staggered Hendon to his foundations. He muttered to himself,
“Lo, the poor thing’s madness is up with the time! It hath changed
with the great change that is come to the realm, and now in fancy is
he _king_! Good lack, I must humour the conceit, too--there is no other
way--faith, he would order me to the Tower, else!”
And pleased with this jest, he removed the chair from the table,
took his stand behind the King, and proceeded to wait upon him in the
courtliest way he was capable of.
While the King ate, the rigour of his royal dignity relaxed a little,
and with his growing contentment came a desire to talk. He said--“I
think thou callest thyself Miles Hendon, if I heard thee aright?”
“Yes, Sire,” Miles replied; then observed to himself, “If I _must_
humour the poor lad’s madness, I must ‘Sire’ him, I must ‘Majesty’ him,
I must not go by halves, I must stick at nothing that belongeth to the