The Unfortunate Traveller and Other Works (33 page)

This silver-sounding tale made such sugared harmony in his ears that with the sweet meditation what a more than miraculous politician he should be and what kingly promotion should come tumbling on him thereby, he could have found in his heart to have packed up his pipes and to have gone to heaven without a bait.
⁵⁰
Yea, he was more inflamed and ravished with it than a young man called Taurimontanus was with the Phrygian melody: who was so incensed and fired therewith that he would needs run presently upon it and set a courtesan's house on fire that had angered him.

No remedy there was but I must help to furnish him with money. I did so, as who will not make his enemy a bridge of gold to fly by? Very earnestly he conjured me to make no man living privy to his departure, in regard of his place and charge, and on his honour assured me his return should be very short and successful. ‘Ay, ay, shorter by the neck,' thought I. In the meantime, let this be thy posy:
⁵¹
‘I live in hope to scape the rope.'

Gone he is. God send him good shipping to Wapping, and by this time, if you will, let him be a pitiful poor fellow and undone for ever. For mine own part, if he had been mine own brother I could have done no more for him than I did; for, straight after his back was turned, I went in all love and kindness to the Marshal General of the field, and certified him that such a man was lately fled to the enemy, and got his place begged for another immediately. What became of him after you shall hear. To the enemy he went and offered his service, railing egregiously against the King of England. He swore, as he was a gentleman and a soldier, he would be revenged on him; and let but the King of France follow his counsel, he would drive him from Turwin walls yet ere three days to an end. All these were good humours, but the tragedy followeth. The French King hearing of such a prating fellow that was come, desired to see
him, but yet he feared treason, willing one of his minions to take upon him his person, and he would stand by as a private person while he was examined. Why should I use any idle delays? In was Captain Gogswounds brought, after he was throughly searched Not a louse in his doublet was let pass but was asked
Quevela
?
⁵²
and charged to stand in the King's name. The moulds of his buttons they turned out to see if they were not bullets covered over with thread. The cod-piece in his devil's breeches
⁵³
(for they were then in fashion) they said plainly was a case for a pistol. If he had had ever a hobnail in his shoes, it had hanged him, and he should never have known who had harmed him. But as luck was, he had no mite of any metal about him. He took part with none of the Four Ages, neither the Golden Age, the Silver Age, the Brazen, nor the Iron Age; only his purse was aged in emptiness, and I think verily a puritan, for it kept itself from any pollution of crosses.
⁵⁴
Standing before the supposed King, he was asked what he was and wherefore he came. To which, in a glorious bragging humour, he answered that he was a gentleman, a captain commander, a chief leader, that came from the King of England upon discontentment. Questioned of the particular cause, he had not a word to bless himself with, yet fain he would have patched out a polt-foot
⁵⁵
tale, but, God knows, it had not one true leg to stand on.

Then began he to smell on the villain so rammishly
⁵⁶
that none there but was ready to rent him in pieces, yet the minion-king kept in his choler, and propounded unto him further what of the King of England's secrets (so advantage-able) he was privy to, as might remove him from the siege of Turwin in three days. He said divers, divers matters which asked longer conference, but in good honesty they were lies which he had not yet stamped.
⁵⁷
Hereat the true King stepped forth and commanded to lay hands on the
lozel,
⁵⁸
and that he should be tortured to confess the truth, for he was a spy and nothing else.

He no sooner saw the wheel and the torments set before him, but he cried out like a rascal and said he was a poor Captain in the English camp, suborned by one Jack Wilton, a nobleman's page, and no other, to come and kill the French King in a bravery
⁵⁹
and return, and that he had no other intention in the world.

This confession could not choose but move them all to laughter, in that he made it as light a matter to kill their King and come back, as to go to Islington and eat a mess of cream and come home again; nay, and besides he protested that he had no other intention, as if that were not enough to hang him.

Adam never fell till God made fools. All this could not keep his joints from ransacking on the wheel, for they vowed either to make him a confessor or a martyr with a trice. When still he sung all one song, they told the King he was a fool, and that some shrewd head had knavishly wrought on him. Wherefore it should stand with his honour to whip him out of the camp and send him home. That persuasion took place, and soundly was he lashed out of their liberties and sent home by a herald with this message: that so the King his Master hoped to whip home all the English fools very shortly. Answer was returned that that shortly was a long lie, and they were shrewd fools that should drive the Frenchman out of his kingdom, and make him glad, with Corinthian Dionysius,
⁶⁰
to play the schoolmaster.

The herald being dismissed, our afflicted intelligencer was called
coram nobis
.
⁶¹
How he sped, judge you; but something he was adjudged too. The sparrow for his lechery liveth but a year; he for his treachery was turned on the toe,
⁶²
Plura dolor prohibet
.
⁶³

Here let me triumph awhile and ruminate a line or two on the excellence of my wit; but I will not breathe neither till I have disfraughted all my knavery.

Another Switzer Captain that was far gone for want of the wench, I led astray most notoriously, for he being a monstrous unthrift of battle-axes (as one that cared not in his anger to bid fly out scuttles to five score of them) and a notable emboweller of quart pots, I came disguised unto him in the form of a half-crown wench, my gown and attire according to the custom then in request. Iwis I had my courtsies in cue, or in quart pot rather, for they dived into the very entrails of the dust, and I simpered with my countenance like a porridge pot on the fire when it first begins to seethe. The sobriety of the circumstance is that after he had courted me and all, and given me in the earnest-penny of impiety some six crowns at the least for an antipast
⁶⁴
to iniquity, I feigned an impregnable excuse to be gone, and never came at him after.

Yet left I not here, but committed a little more scutchery.
⁶⁵
A company of coistral
⁶⁶
clerks (who were in band with Satan, and not of any soldier's collar nor hat-band) pinched a number of good minds to God-ward of their provant.
⁶⁷
They would not let a dram of dead-pay
⁶⁸
over-slip them; they would not lend a groat of the week to come to him that had spent his money before this week was done. They outfaced the greatest and most magnanimous servitors in their sincere and finigraphical
⁶⁹
clean shirts and cuffs. A louse, that was any gentleman's companion, they thought scorn of. Their near-bitten beards must in a devil's name be dewed every day with rose-water. Hogs could have ne'er a hair on their backs for making them rubbing brushes to rouse their crab-lice. They would in no wise per
mit that the motes in the sunbeams should be full-mouthed beholders of their clean finified
⁷⁰
apparel. Their shoes shined as bright as a slike-stone;
⁷¹
their hands troubled and foiled
⁷²
more water with washing than the camel doth, that never drinks till the whole stream be troubled. Summarily, never any were so fantastical the one half as they.

My masters, you may conceive of me what you list, but I think confidently I was ordained God's scourge from above for their dainty finicality. The hour of their punishment could no longer be prorogued,
⁷³
but vengeance must have at them at all aventures.
⁷⁴
So it was, that the most of these above-named goose-quill braggadoches
⁷⁵
were mere cowards and cravens, and durst not so much as throw a penful of ink into the enemy's face, if proof were made. Wherefore on the experience of their pusillanimity, I thought to raise the foundation of my roguery.

What did I now, but one day made a false alarum in the quarter where they lay, to try how they would stand to their tackling, and with a pitiful outcry warned them to fly, for there was treason afoot, they were environed and beset. Upon the first watchword of treason that was given, I think they betook them to their heels very stoutly, left their pen and inkhorns and paper behind them for spoil, resigned their desks, with the money that was in them, to the mercy of the vanquisher, and in fine left me and my fellows (their fool-catchers) lords of the field. How we dealt with them, their disburdened desks can best tell; but this I am assured, we fared the better for it a fortnight of fasting-days after.

I must not place a volume in the precincts of a pamphlet. Sleep an hour or two, and dream that Turney and Turwin is won, that the King is shipped again into England,
⁷⁶
and
that I am close at hard meat
⁷⁷
at Windsor or at Hampton Court What, will you in your indifferent opinions allow me for my travel no more signory over the pages than I had before? Yes, whether you will part with so much probable friendly suppose or no, I'll have it in spite of your hearts. For your instruction and godly consolation, be informed that at that time I was no common squire, no undertrodden torchbearer. I had my feather in my cap as big as a flag in the fore-top; my French doublet gelt
⁷⁸
in the belly as though (like a pig ready to be spitted) all my guts had been plucked out; a pair of side-paned hose
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that hung down like two scales filled with Holland cheeses; my long stock that sat close to my dock
⁸⁰
and smothered not a scab or a lecherous hairy sinew on the calf of the leg; my rapier pendant like a round stick fastened in the tacklings, for skippers the better to climb by; my cape cloak of black cloth overspreading my back like a thornback or an elephant's ear, that hangs on his shoulders like a country huswife's banskin
⁸¹
which she thirls her spindle on; and in consummation of my curiosity, my hands without gloves, all a more
⁸²
French, and a black budge edging of a beard on the upper lip, and the like sable auglet
⁸³
of excrements in the rising of the angle
⁸⁴
of my chin. I was the first that brought in the order of passing into the Court which I derived from the common word
Qui passa
? and the herald's phrase of arms
passant
, thinking in sincerity he was not a gentleman, nor his arms current, who was not first passed by the pages. If any prentice or other came into the Court that was not a gentleman, I thought it was an indignity to the preeminence of the Court to include such a one, and could not
be salved except we gave him Arms Passant to make him a gentleman.

Besides, in Spain none pass any far way but he must be examined what he is and give threepence for his pass.

In which regard, it was considered of by the common table of the cupbearers, what a perilsome thing it was to let any stranger or outdweller approach so near the precincts of the Prince as the Great Chamber, without examining what he was and giving him his pass. Whereupon we established the like order, but took no money of them as they did; only, for a sign that he had not passed our hands unexamined, we set a red mark on their ears, and so let them walk as authentical.

I must not discover what ungodly dealing we had with the black jacks,
⁸⁵
or how oft I was crowned King of the Drunkards with a court cup. Let me quietly descend to the waning of my youthful days, and tell a little of the sweating sickness
⁸⁶
that made me in a cold sweat take my heels and run out of England.

This sweating sickness was a disease that a man then might catch and never go to a hot-house. Many masters desire to have such servants as would work till they sweat again, but in those days he that sweat never wrought again. That scripture then was not thought so necessary which says ‘Earn thy living with the sweat of thy brows,' for then they earned their dying with the sweat of their brows. It was enough if a fat man did but truss his points to turn him over the perch.
⁸⁷
Mother Cornelius' tub,
⁸⁸
why, it was like hell; he that came into it never came out of it.

Cooks that stand continually basting their faces before the fire, were now all cashiered with this sweat into kitchen stuff. Their hall fell into the King's hands for want of one of the trade to uphold it.

Felt-makers and furriers, what the one with the hot steam
of their wool new taken out of the pan, and the other with the contagious heat of their slaughter budge
⁸⁹
and coney
⁹⁰
skins, died more thick than of the pestilence. I have seen an old woman at that season, having three chins, wipe them all away one after another, as they melted to water, and left herself nothing of a mouth but an upper chap. Look how in May or the heat of summer we lay butter in water for fear it should melt away, so then were men fain to wet their clothes in water as dyers do, and hid themselves in wells from the heat of the sun.

Then happy was he that was an ass, for nothing will kill an ass but cold, and none died but with extreme heat. The fishes called sea-stars, that burn one another by excessive heat, were not so contagious as one man that had the sweat was to another. Masons paid nothing for hair to mix their lime, nor glovers to stuff their balls with, for then they had it for nothing; it dropped off men's heads and beards faster than any barber could shave it. Oh, if hair breeches had then been in fashion, what a fine world had it been for tailors; and so it was a fine world for tailors nevertheless, for he that could make a garment slightest and thinnest carried it away. Cutters, I can tell you, then stood upon it to have their trade one of the twelve companies, for who was it then that would not have his doublet cut to the skin and his shirt cut into it too, to make it more cold. It was as much as a man's life was worth once to name a frieze jerkin; it was high treason for a fat gross man to come within five miles of the Court. I heard where they died up all in one family, and not a mother's child escaped, insomuch as they had but an Irish rug locked up in a press, and not laid upon any bed neither. If those that were sick of this malady slept of it, they never waked more. Physicians with their simples
⁹¹
in this case waxed simple fellows, and knew not which way to bestir them.