Sir Ludar

Sir Ludar, by Talbot Baines Reed

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Sir Ludar, by Talbot Baines Reed This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
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, and still my story lacked a beginning.
How comes it, then, that this day in May, of all others, should stand up like a wall, as I look back