The Prince and the Pauper
nothing but flight may stead thee. The man is this moment delivering up
the ghost. ’Tis the priest, Father Andrew!”
“God-a-mercy!” exclaimed Canty. He roused his family, and hoarsely
commanded, “Up with ye all and fly--or bide where ye are and perish!”
Scarcely five minutes later the Canty household were in the street and
flying for their lives. John Canty held the Prince by the wrist, and
hurried him along the dark way, giving him this caution in a low voice--
“Mind thy tongue, thou mad fool, and speak not our name. I will choose
me a new name, speedily, to throw the law’s dogs off the scent. Mind
thy tongue, I tell thee!”
He growled these words to the rest of the family--
“If it so chance that we be separated, let each make for London Bridge;
whoso findeth himself as far as the last linen-draper’s shop on the
bridge, let him tarry there till the others be come, then will we flee
into Southwark together.”
At this moment the party burst suddenly out of darkness into light;
and not only into light, but into the midst of a multitude of singing,
dancing, and shouting people, massed together on the river frontage.
There was a line of bonfires stretching as far as one could see, up
and down the Thames; London Bridge was illuminated; Southwark Bridge
likewise; the entire river was aglow with the flash and sheen of
coloured lights; and constant explosions of fireworks filled the skies
with an intricate commingling of shooting splendours and a thick rain
of dazzling sparks that almost turned night into day; everywhere were
crowds of revellers; all London seemed to be at large.
John Canty delivered himself of a furious curse and commanded a retreat;
but it was too late. He and his tribe were swallowed up in that
swarming hive of humanity, and hopelessly separated from each other in
an instant. We are not considering that the Prince was one of his tribe;
Canty still kept his grip upon him. The Prince’s heart was beating high
with hopes of escape, now. A burly waterman, considerably exalted with
liquor, found himself rudely shoved by Canty in his efforts to plough
through the crowd; he laid his great hand on Canty’s shoulder and said--
“Nay, whither so fast, friend? Dost canker thy soul with sordid
business when all that be leal men and true make holiday?”
“Mine affairs are mine own, they concern thee not,” answered Canty,
roughly; “take away thy hand and let me pass.”
“Sith that is thy humour, thou’lt _not_ pass, till thou’st drunk to the
Prince of Wales, I tell thee that,” said the waterman, barring the way
resolutely.
“Give me the cup, then, and make speed, make speed!”
Other revellers were interested by this time. They cried out--
“The loving-cup, the loving-cup! make the sour knave drink the
loving-cup, else will we feed him to the fishes.”
So a huge loving-cup was brought; the waterman, grasping it by one of
its handles, and with the other hand bearing up the end of an imaginary
napkin, presented it in due and ancient form to Canty, who had to grasp
the opposite handle with one of his hands and take off the lid with the
other, according to ancient custom. This left the Prince hand-free for
a second, of course. He wasted no time, but dived among the forest of
legs about him and disappeared. In another moment he could not have
been harder to find, under that tossing sea of life, if its billows had
been the Atlantic’s and he a lost sixpence.
He very soon realised this fact, and straightway busied himself about
his own affairs without further thought of John Canty. He quickly
realised another thing, too. To wit, that a spurious Prince of Wales
was being feasted by the city in his stead. He easily concluded that
the pauper lad, Tom Canty, had deliberately taken advantage of his
stupendous opportunity and become a usurper.
Therefore there was but one course to pursue--find his way to the
Guildhall, make himself known, and denounce the impostor. He also made
up his mind that Tom should be allowed a reasonable time for spiritual
preparation, and then be hanged, drawn and quartered, according to the
law and usage of the day in cases of high treason.
CHAPTER XI. At Guildhall.
The royal barge, attended by its gorgeous fleet, took its stately way
down the Thames through the wilderness of illuminated boats. The air was
laden with music; the river banks were beruffled with joy-flames; the
distant city lay in a soft luminous glow from its countless invisible
bonfires; above it rose many a slender spire into the sky, incrusted
with sparkling lights, wherefore in their remoteness they seemed like
jewelled lances thrust aloft; as the fleet swept along, it was greeted
from the banks with a continuous hoarse roar of cheers and the ceaseless
flash and boom of artillery.
To Tom Canty, half buried in his silken cushions, these sounds and this
spectacle were a wonder unspeakably sublime and astonishing. To his
little friends at his side, the Princess Elizabeth and the Lady Jane
Grey, they were nothing.
Arrived at the Dowgate, the fleet was towed up the limpid Walbrook
(whose channel has now been for two centuries buried out of sight under
acres of buildings) to Bucklersbury, past houses and under bridges
populous with merry-makers and brilliantly lighted, and at last came to
a halt in a basin where now is Barge Yard, in the centre of the ancient
city of London. Tom disembarked, and he and his gallant procession
crossed Cheapside and made a short march through the Old Jewry and
Basinghall Street to the Guildhall.
Tom and his little ladies were received with due ceremony by the Lord
Mayor and the Fathers of the City, in their gold chains and scarlet
robes of state, and conducted to a rich canopy of state at the head of
the great hall, preceded by heralds making proclamation, and by the Mace
and the City Sword. The lords and ladies who were to attend upon Tom
and his two small friends took their places behind their chairs.
At a lower table the Court grandees and other guests of noble degree
were seated, with the magnates of the city; the commoners took places at
a multitude of tables on the main floor of the hall. From their lofty
vantage-ground the giants Gog and Magog, the ancient guardians of the
city, contemplated the spectacle below them with eyes grown familiar
to it in forgotten generations. There was a bugle-blast and a
proclamation, and a fat butler appeared in a high perch in the leftward
wall, followed by his servitors bearing with impressive solemnity a
royal baron of beef, smoking hot and ready for the knife.
After grace, Tom (being instructed) rose--and the whole house with
him--and drank from a portly golden loving-cup with the Princess
Elizabeth; from her it passed to the Lady Jane, and then traversed the
general assemblage. So the banquet began.
By midnight the revelry was at its height. Now came one of those
picturesque spectacles so admired in that old day. A description of it
is still extant in the quaint wording of a chronicler who witnessed it:
‘Space being made, presently entered a baron and an earl appareled after
the Turkish fashion in long robes of bawdkin powdered with gold; hats on
their heads of crimson velvet, with great rolls of gold, girded with two
swords, called scimitars, hanging by great bawdricks of gold. Next came
yet another baron and another earl, in two long gowns of yellow satin,
traversed with white satin, and in every bend of white was a bend of
crimson satin, after the fashion of Russia, with furred hats of gray on
their heads; either of them having an hatchet in their hands, and boots
with pykes’ (points a foot long), ’turned up. And after them came
a knight, then the Lord High Admiral, and with him five nobles, in
doublets of crimson velvet, voyded low on the back and before to the
cannell-bone, laced on the breasts with chains of silver; and over
that, short cloaks of crimson satin, and on their heads hats after
the dancers’ fashion, with pheasants’ feathers in them. These were
appareled after the fashion of Prussia. The torchbearers, which were
about an hundred, were appareled in crimson satin and green, like Moors,
their faces black. Next came in a mommarye. Then the minstrels, which
were disguised, danced; and the lords and ladies did wildly dance also,
that it was a pleasure to behold.’
And while Tom, in his high seat, was gazing upon this ‘wild’ dancing,
lost in admiration of the dazzling commingling of kaleidoscopic colours
which the whirling turmoil of gaudy figures below him presented, the
ragged but real little Prince of Wales was proclaiming his rights and
his wrongs, denouncing the impostor, and clamouring for admission at
the gates of Guildhall! The crowd enjoyed this episode prodigiously,
and pressed forward and craned their necks to see the small rioter.
Presently they began to taunt him and mock at him, purposely to goad him
into a higher and still more entertaining fury. Tears of mortification
sprang to his eyes, but he stood his ground and defied the mob right
royally. Other taunts followed, added mockings stung him, and he
exclaimed--
“I tell ye again, you pack of unmannerly curs, I am the Prince of Wales!
And all forlorn and friendless as I be, with none to give me word of
grace or help me in my need, yet will not I be driven from my ground,
but will maintain it!”
“Though thou be prince or no prince, ’tis all one, thou be’st a gallant
lad, and not friendless neither! Here stand I by thy side to prove
it; and mind I tell thee thou might’st have a worser friend than Miles
Hendon and yet not tire thy legs with seeking. Rest thy small jaw, my
child; I talk the language of these base kennel-rats like to a very
native.”
The speaker was a sort of Don Caesar de Bazan in dress, aspect, and
bearing. He was tall, trim-built, muscular. His doublet and trunks
were of rich material, but faded and threadbare, and their gold-lace
adornments were sadly tarnished; his ruff was rumpled and damaged;
the plume in his slouched hat was broken and had a bedraggled and
disreputable look; at his side he wore a long rapier in a rusty iron
sheath; his swaggering carriage marked him at once as a ruffler of
the camp. The speech of this fantastic figure was received with an
explosion of jeers and laughter. Some cried, “‘Tis another prince in
disguise!” “‘Ware thy tongue, friend: belike he is dangerous!”
“Marry, he looketh it--mark his eye!” “Pluck the lad from him--to the
horse-pond wi’ the cub!”
Instantly a hand was laid upon the Prince, under the impulse of this
happy thought; as instantly the stranger’s long sword was out and the
meddler went to the earth under a sounding thump with the flat of it.
The next moment a score of voices shouted, “Kill the dog! Kill him!
Kill him!” and the mob closed in on the warrior, who backed himself
against a wall and began to lay about him with his long weapon like a
madman. His victims sprawled this way and that, but the mob-tide poured
over their prostrate forms and dashed itself against the champion with
undiminished fury.
His moments seemed numbered, his destruction certain, when suddenly a
trumpet-blast sounded, a voice shouted, “Way for the King’s messenger!”
and a troop of horsemen came charging down upon the mob, who fled out of
harm’s reach as fast as their legs could carry them. The bold stranger
caught up the Prince in his arms, and was soon far away from danger and
the multitude.
Return we within the Guildhall. Suddenly, high above the jubilant roar
and thunder of the revel, broke the clear peal of a bugle-note. There
was instant silence--a deep hush; then a single voice rose--that of the
messenger from the palace--and began to pipe forth a proclamation, the
whole multitude standing listening.