The Armourers Prentices | Page 4

a strip of parchment, drawn up by one of the monks of
Beaulieu, leaving each of them twenty crowns, with a few small jewels
and properties left by their own mother, while everything else went to
their brother.
There might have been some jealousy excited by the estimation in
which Stephen's efficiency--boy as he was--was evidently held by the
plain-spoken underlings of the verdurer; and this added to Mistress
Birkenholt's dislike to the presence of her husband's half-brothers,
whom she regarded as interlopers without a right to exist. Matters were
brought to a climax by old Spring's resentment at being roughly teased
by her spoilt children. He had done nothing worse than growl and show
his teeth, but the town-bred dame had taken alarm, and half in terror,
half in spite, had insisted on his instant execution, since he was too old
to be valuable. Stephen, who loved the dog only less than he loved his
brother Ambrose, had come to high words with her; and the end of the
altercation had been that she had declared that she would suffer no
great lubbers of the half-blood to devour her children's inheritance, and
teach them ill manners, and that go they must, and that instantly. John
had muttered a little about "not so fast, dame," and "for very shame,"
but she had turned on him, and rated him with a violence that
demonstrated who was ruler in the house, and took away all disposition
to tarry long under the new dynasty.
The boys possessed two uncles, one on each side of the house. Their
father's elder brother had been a man-at-arms, having preferred a
stirring life to the Forest, and had fought in the last surges of the Wars
of the Roses. Having become disabled and infirm, he had taken
advantage of a corrody, or right of maintenance, as being of kin to a
benefactor of Hyde Abbey at Winchester, to which Birkenholt some
generations back had presented a few roods of land, in right of which,
one descendant at a time might be maintained in the Abbey.
Intelligence of his brother's death had been sent to Richard Birkenholt,
but answer had been returned that he was too evil- disposed with the
gout to attend the burial.

The other uncle, Harry Randall, had disappeared from the country
under a cloud connected with the king's deer, leaving behind him the
reputation of a careless, thriftless, jovial fellow, the best company in all
the Forest, and capable of doing every one's work save his own.
The two brothers, who were about seven and six years old at the time of
his flight, had a lively recollection of his charms as a playmate, and of
their mother's grief for him, and refusal to believe any ill of her Hal.
Rumours had come of his attainment to vague and unknown greatness
at court, under the patronage of the Lord Archbishop of York, which
the Verdurer laughed to scorn, though his wife gave credit to them.
Gifts had come from time to time, passed through a succession of
servants and officials of the king, such as a coral and silver rosary, a
jewelled bodkin, an agate carved with St. Catherine, an ivory pouncet
box with a pierced gold coin as the lid; but no letter with them, as
indeed Hal Randall had never been induced to learn to read or write.
Master Birkenholt looked doubtfully at the tokens and hoped Hal had
come honestly by them; but his wife had thoroughly imbued her sons
with the belief that Uncle Hal was shining in his proper sphere, where
he was better appreciated than at home. Thus their one plan was to go
to London to find Uncle Hal, who was sure to put Stephen on the road
to fortune, and enable Ambrose to become a great scholar, his favourite
ambition.
His gifts would, as Ambrose observed, serve them as tokens, and with
the purpose of claiming them, they re-entered the hall, a long low room,
with a handsome open roof, and walls tapestried with dressed skins,
interspersed with antlers, hung with weapons of the chase. At one end
of the hall was a small polished barrel, always replenished with beer, at
the other a hearth with a wood fire constantly burning, and there was a
table running the whole length of the room; at one end of this was laid
a cloth, with a few trenchers on it, and horn cups, surrounding a barley
loaf and a cheese, this meagre irregular supper being considered as a
sufficient supplement to the funeral baked meats which had abounded
at Beaulieu. John Birkenholt sat at the table with a trencher and horn
before him, uneasily using his knife to crumble, rather than cut, his
bread. His wife, a thin, pale,