Robert Stephens - Captain Ravenshaw; Or, The Maid of Cheapside. A Romance of Elizabethan London

The ill-clad person who clutched the cooked fowl, which accident had thus summarily bestowed upon him, made short work of fleeing down the stairs and out into the black, chill February night. Once outside, though he could not see his hand before his face, he turned toward Cheapside and stumbled forward along the miry way, his desire evidently being to put himself so far from the Windmill tavern that he might not be overtaken by any one who could lay claim to the fowl.

The air was damp as well as cold. The fugitive, keeping his ungloved hands warm by spreading them around the fowl, which was fresh from the spit, had to grope his way through an inky wind. He listened for possible footfalls behind him, but he heard none, and so he chuckled inwardly and held his prize close to his breast with a sense of security. Now and then he raised it to his nostrils, in anticipation of the feast he should enjoy upon arriving at the resting-place he had in mind. He would have made a strange spectacle to anybody who might have been able to see him from one of the rattling casements as he passed; but so dark it was that downlookers could no more have seen him than he could see the painted plaster, carved cross-timbers, projecting windows, and gabled roof-peaks of the tall houses that lined the narrow street through which he fled.

At one place a lantern hanging over a door threw a faint light upon him for a moment, and showed a young man's face, with sharp features and a soft expression; but the face was instantly gone in the darkness, and there was no other night-walker abroad in the street to have seen it while it was visible.

"Surely," he meditated, as he went, "the time of miracles has returned. And even a starved scholar is found worthy of Heaven's interposition. With the temerity of the famished, I enter a tavern, ascend the stairs, and steal into a room which I take to be empty because no sound comes from it, my only hope being to pilfer a little warmth nobody will miss, perchance to fall heir to a drop of wine at the bottom of a glass, or a bone upon an uncleared table. And lo, I find myself in the presence of a gentleman asleep before a pot of mulled canary, which he has scarce wet his throat withal. In three swallows I make the canary my own, just in time to set down the pot before in comes a tapster. I feign I am in search of friends, who must be in t'other chamber. To make good the deceit, I must needs look in at t'other chamber door; when, behold, some follower of Mars, who looks as hungry as myself, pelts me with poultry. It is plainly a gift of the gods, and I am no such ill-mannered clown as to stay and inquire into the matter. Well, gaudeamus igitur , my sweet bird; here we are at St. Mary Cole Church, on the steps of which we shall make each other's better acquaintance. Jove! – or rather Bacchus! – what tumult a pint or so of mulled wine makes in the head of a poor master of arts, when too suddenly imbibed!"

He went half-way up the steps and sat down, crouching into the smallest figure possible, as if he might thus offer the least surface to the cold. Sinking his teeth into the succulent breast of the roast fowl, he forgot the weather in the joy of eating. But he had scarce taken two bites when he was fain to suspend his pleasure, for the sound of rapid footfalls came along the way he had just traversed. He took alarm.

"Sit quiet now, in God's name, Master Holyday!" he mentally adjured himself. "'Tis mayhap one in search of the fowl. Night, I am beholden to thee for thy mantle."

The person strode past and into Cheapside without apprehension of the scholar's presence upon the steps. The scholar could not make out the man's looks, but could divine from sundry muttered oaths he gave vent to, and from his incautious haste of movement, that he was angry.

"God 'a' mercy! how he takes to heart the loss of a paltry fowl!" mused Master Holyday, resuming the consumption of his supper on the church steps. "For, certes, 'twas from the Windmill he came; from his voice, and the copiousness of his swearing, I should take him to be that very soldier whom the gods impelled to provide me with supper. Well, he is now out of hearing; and a good thing, too, for there comes the moon at last from the ragged edge of yon black cloud. Blow, wind, and clear the sky for her. Pish! what is this? Can I not find my mouth? Ha, ha! 'tis the mulled wine."

The scholar had indeed struck his nose with the fowl, when he had meant to bring it again between his teeth. He was conscious of the increased effect of the wine in other ways, too, and chiefly in a pleasanter perception of everything, a sense of agreeable comicality in all his surroundings, a warmed regard for all objects within view or thought. This enhanced the enjoyment of his meal. The moonlight, though frequently dimmed by rushing scraps of cloud, made visible the streets near whose junction he sat, so that the house fronts stood strangely forth in weird shine and shadow. The scholar, shivering upon the steps, was the only living creature in the scene. Yet there seemed to be a queer half-life come into inanimate things. The wind could be heard moaning sometimes in unseen passages. The hanging signs creaked as if they now and then conversed one with another in brief, monosyllabic language.

"In the daylight," thought the scholar, "men and women possess the streets, their customs prevail, and their opinions rule. But now, forsooth, the house fronts and the signs, the casements and the weathercocks, have their conference. Are they considering solely of their own matters, or do they tell one another tales of the foolish beings that move about on legs, hurrying and chattering, by day? Faith, is it of me they are talking? See with what a blank look those houses gaze down at me, like a bench of magistrates at a rogue. But the house at the end, the tall one with the straight front, – I swear it is frowning upon me. And the one beside it, with the fat oriel windows, and whose upper stories belly so far out over the street, – as I'm a gentleman and a scholar, 'tis laughing at me. Has it come to this? – to be a thing of mirth to a monster of wood and plaster, a huge face with eyes of glass? For this did Ralph Holyday take his degrees at Cambridge University, and was esteemed as able a disputant as ever came forth of Benet College? Go thy ways, Ralph; better wert thou some fat citizen snoring behind yon same walls, than Master Holyday, magister artium , lodging houseless on the church steps with all thy scholarship. Not so, neither; thou wouldst be damned rather! Hark, who is it walks in Cheapside, and coming this way, too?"

He might have recognised the tread as the same which had some minutes before moved in the opposite direction; though it was now less rapid, as if the owner of the feet had walked off some of his wrath. Coming into view at the end of the Old Jewry, that owner proved to be in truth the very soldier of whom Holyday had caught a glimpse at the tavern. The soldier, turning by some impulse, saw the scholar on the steps; but his warlike gaze had now no terror for Master Holyday, who had put at least half of the fowl beyond possible recovery, and whose appetite was no longer keen.

"God save you, sir!" said the scholar, courteously. "Were you seeking a certain roast fowl?"

"Not I, sirrah," replied Captain Ravenshaw, approaching Holyday. "You are he that stood in the doorway, perchance? Rest easy; the fowl was none of mine. I should scorn to swallow a morsel of it."

And yet he eyed it in such a manner that Master Holyday, who was a good judge of a hungry glance, said, placidly:

"You are welcome to what is left of it here." Which offer the scholar enforced with a satisfied sigh, indicating fulness of stomach.

The captain made a very brief pretence of silent hesitation, then accepted the remainder of the feast from the scholar's hands, saying: