Sir Ludar

Sir Ludar, by Talbot Baines Reed

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Title: Sir Ludar A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess
Author: Talbot Baines Reed
Release Date: April 5, 2007 [EBook #20993]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SIR
LUDAR ***

Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England

Sir Ludar
A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess
By Talbot Baines Reed
----

For regular readers of Reed's works this will be a surprise. Not a
mention of a school or its inhabitants! Set in the late sixteenth century
and couched in slightly archaic English, it narrates the adventures of an
apprentice to a printer. But this young lad gets caught up in all sorts of
adventures, and is especially drawn to Ludar, a young Irish rebel.
There is a good deal of travelling by sea, and though this sounds
convincing as Reed writes it, there is not much depth in it. In other
words you do not need a deep knowledge of rigging and seamanship to
follow what is happening, as you do with, for instance, the work of
W.H.G. Kingston.
There is a slightly dream-like feel about this book. We jump from one
situation to the next without, sometimes, being sure how we got there.
Try the book for yourself, and see what you think. NH.
----
SIR LUDAR
A STORY OF THE DAYS OF THE GREAT QUEEN BESS
BY TALBOT BAINES REED
A STORY OF THE DAYS OF THE GREAT QUEEN BESS.
CHAPTER ONE.
HOW I SAW MY QUEEN.
Every story, whether wise or foolish, grave or gay, must needs have a
beginning. How it comes to pass that my story begins on a certain day
in May, in the year of our Lord 1585, I can never, although I am far on
in life now, properly explain.
For that was not the day on which I was born. That adventure had
befallen me eighteen years before, at the parson's little house in Felton

Regis. Most people who write their histories have a pride in dragging
their readers back to the moment when they first hallooed defiance to
this wicked world; but I, since I have clean forgotten the event, must
e'en confess that my story does not begin there. A like adventure
chanced often at the parsonage, and, at nine years of age, I reigned king
absolute over a nursery full of her Majesty's subjects who called me
brother, and quailed before my nod like Helots before the crest of a
Spartan. But, as I say, all that is neither here nor there in my story.
Nor, in truth, is that grey September day, when, on the tail of a country
hay-cart, I rode tremulously at my dear father's side into London; where,
with much pomp and taking of oaths, I was bound apprentice, body and
soul, to Master Robert Walgrave, the printer, in the presence of the
worshipful Master, Wardens, and Assistants of the Company of
Stationers, who enriched themselves by 2 shillings 6 pence at my
father's cost, and looked upon me in a hungry way that made me
tremble in my bones, and long to be out of their sight before they
should order the bill of fare for their next feast. That was a day in my
life truly, but it was ancient history when my story begins. I had grown
a big lad since then, and was the king of Clubs without Temple Bar,
and the terror of all young 'prentices for a mile round, who looked up
with white cheeks when I swaggered by, and ran with their tails
between their legs to hide behind counters and doorposts till I was out
of sight.
No; nor yet does my story begin even at that sad day--alack!--when I
stood by my widowed mother at the open grave of him who had been
the pillar of our house and the pride of our lives. "Humphrey, my boy,"
she had said as she placed her hand on my arm and led me, like one in a
dream, from the place, "it is God who has taken--He will surely also
give. Shall I count all lost, with a stalwart arm like this to lean upon?"
Then she kissed me, and I, for very shame, dried my eyes and held up
my head. Ah me! that was but a year before; the world had still moved
on, the grass covered his grave,