'I think I should,' said Ambrose. 'I remember best how he used to carry me on his shoulder to cull mistletoe for Christmas.'
'Ah, ha! A proper fellow of his inches now, with yellow hair?'
'Nay,' said Ambrose, 'I mind that his hair was black, and his eyes as black as sloes-or as thine own, Master Jester.'
The jester tumbled over into a more extraordinary attitude than before, while Stephen said-
'John was wont to twit us with being akin to Gipsy Hal.'
'I mean a man sad and grave as the monks of Beaulieu,' said the jester.
'He!' they both cried. 'No, indeed! He was foremost in all sports.'
'Ah!' cried Stephen, 'mind you not, Ambrose, his teaching us leap-frog, and aye leaping over one of us himself, with the other in his arms.'
'Ah! sadly changed, sadly changed,' said the jester, standing upright, with a most mournful countenance. 'Maybe you'd not thank me if I showed him to you, young sirs, that is, if he be the man.'
'Nay! is he in need, or distress?' cried the brothers.
'Poor Hal!' returned the fool, shaking his head with mournfulness in his voice.
'Oh, take us to him, good-good jester,' cried Ambrose. 'We are young and strong. We will work for him.'
'What, a couple of lads like you, that have come to London seeking for him to befriend you-deserving well cap for that matter. Will ye be guided to him, my broken and soured-no more gamesome, but a sickly old runagate?'
'Of course,' cried Ambrose. 'He is our mother's brother. We must care for him.'
'Master Headley will give us work, mayhap,' said Stephen, turning to Tibble. 'I could clean the furnaces.'
'Ah, ha! I see fools' caps must hang thick as beech masts in the Forest,' cried the fool, but his voice was husky, and he turned suddenly round with his back to them, then cut three or four extraordinary capers, after which he observed-
'Well, young gentlemen, I will see the man I mean, and if he be the same, and be willing to own you for his nephews, he will meet you in the Temple Gardens at six of the clock this evening, close to the rose-bush with the flowers in my livery-motley red and white.'
'But how shall we know him?'
'D'ye think a pair of green caterpillars like you can't be marked- unless indeed the gardener crushes you for blighting his roses.' Wherewith the jester quitted the scene, walking on his hands, with his legs in the air.
'Is he to be trusted?' asked Tibble of the comptroller.
'Assuredly,' was the answer; 'none hath better wit than Quipsome Hal, when he chooseth to be in earnest. In very deed, as I have heard Sir Thomas More say, it needeth a wise man to be fool to my Lord of York.'
CHAPTER EIGHT. QUIPSOME HAL.
'The sweet and bitter fool
Will presently appear,
The one in motley here
The other found out there.'
Shakespeare.
There lay the quiet Temple Gardens, on the Thames bank, cut out in formal walks, with flowers growing in the beds of the homely kinds beloved by the English. Musk roses, honeysuckle and virgin's bower, climbed on the old grey walls; sops-in-wine, bluebottles, bachelor's buttons, stars of Bethlehem and the like, filled the borders; May thorns were in full sweet blossom; and near one another were the two rose- bushes, one damask and one white provence, whence Somerset and Warwick were said to have plucked their fatal badges; while on the opposite side of a broad grass-plot was another bush, looked on as a great curiosity of the best omen, where the roses were streaked with alternate red and white, in honour, as it were, of the union of York and Lancaster.
By this rose-tree stood the two young Birkenholts. Edmund Burgess having, by his master's desire, shown them the way, and passed them in by a word and sign from his master, then retired unseen to a distance to mark what became of them, they having promised also to return and report of themselves to Master Headley.
They stood together earnestly watching for the coming of the uncle, feeling quite uncertain whether to expect a frail old broken man, or to find themselves absolutely deluded, and made game of by the jester.
The gardens were nearly empty, for most people were sitting over their supper-tables after the business of the day was over, and only one or two figures in black gowns paced up and down in conversation.
'Come away, Ambrose,' said Stephen at last. 'He only meant to make fools of us! Come, before he comes to gibe us for having heeded a moment. Come, I say-here's this man coming to ask us what we are doing here.'
For a tall, well-made, well personage in the black or sad colour of a legal official, looking like a prosperous householder, or superior artisan, was approaching them, some attendant, as the boys concluded belonging to the Temple. They expected to be turned out, and Ambrose in an apologetic tone, began, 'Sir, we were bidden to meet a-a kinsman here.'
'And even so am I,' was the answer, in a grave, quiet tone, 'or rather to meet twain.'
Ambrose looked up into a pair of dark eyes, and exclaimed, 'Stevie, Stevie, 'tis he. 'Tis uncle Hal.'
'Ay, 'tis all you're like to have for him,' answered Harry Randall, enfolding each in his embrace. 'Lad, how like thou art to my poor sister! And is she indeed gone-and your honest father too-and none left at home but that hunks, little John? How and when died she?'
'Two years agone come Lammastide,' answered Stephen. 'There was a deadly creeping fever and ague through the Forest. We two sickened, and Ambrose was so like to die that Diggory went to the abbey for the priest to housel and anneal him, but by the time Father Simon came he was sound asleep, and soon was whole again. But before we were on our legs, our blessed mother took the disease, and she passed away ere many days were over. Then, though poor father took not that sickness, he never was the same man again, and only twelve days after last Pasch-tide he was taken with a fit and never spake again.'
Stephen was weeping by this time, and his uncle had a hand on his shoulder, and with tears in his eyes, threw in ejaculations of pity and affection. Ambrose finished the narrative with a broken voice indeed, but as one who had more self-command than his brother, perhaps than his uncle, whose exclamations became bitter and angry as he heard of the treatment the boys had experienced from their half-brother, who, as he said, he had always known as a currish mean-spirited churl, but scarce such as this.
'Nor do I think he would have been, save for his wife, Maud Pratt of Hampton,' said Ambrose. 'Nay, truly also, he deemed that we were only within a day's journey of council from our uncle Richard at Hyde.'
'Richard Birkenholt was a sturdy old comrade! Methinks he would give Master Jack a piece of his mind.'
'Alack, good uncle, we found him in his dotage, and the bursar of Hyde made quick work with us, for fear, good Father Shoveller said, that we were come to look after his corrody.'
'Shoveller-what, a Shoveller of Cranbury? How fell ye in with him?'
Ambrose told the adventures of their journey, and Randall exclaimed, 'By my bau-I mean by my faith-if ye have ill-luck in uncles, ye have had good luck in friends.'
'No ill-luck in thee, good, kind uncle,' said Stephen, catching at his hand with the sense of comfort that kindred blood gives.
'How wottest thou that, child? Did not I-I mean did not Merryman tell you, that mayhap ye would not be willing to own your uncle?'
'We deemed he was but jesting,' said Stephen.
For a sudden twinkle in the black eyes, an involuntary twist of the muscles of the face, were a sudden revelation to him. He clutched hold of Ambrose with a sudden grasp; Ambrose too looked and recoiled for a moment, while the colour spread over his face.
'Yes, lads. Can you brook the thought!-Harry Randall is the poor fool!'
Stephen, whose composure had already broken down, burst into tears again, perhaps mostly at the downfall of all his own expectations and glorifications of the kinsman about whom he had boasted. Ambrose only exclaimed, 'O uncle, you must have been hard pressed.' For indeed the grave, almost melancholy man, who stood before them, regarding them wistfully, had little in common with the lithe tumbler full of absurdities whom they had left at York
