



Produced by Al Haines









[Frontispiece: The great ledger-book--which I now saw turned to an
engine of our salvation.  Chapter XIV]





IDONIA:

A ROMANCE OF OLD LONDON


BY

ARTHUR F. WALLIS




ILLUSTRATED BY

CHARLES E. BROCK




BOSTON

LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY

1914




_Copyright, 1913_,

By LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY.


_All rights reserved_




THE COLONIAL PRESS

C. H. SIMONDS & CO., BOSTON, U. S. A.




AUTHOR'S NOTE

The irregular pile of buildings known as Petty Wales, of which
considerable mention is made in this book, formerly stood at the
northeast corner of Thames Street.  The chronicler, Stow, writes of
"some large buildings of stone, the ruins whereof do yet remain, but
the first builders and owners of them are worn out of memory.  Some are
of opinion... that this great stone building was sometime the lodging
appointed for the princes of Wales when they repaired to this city, and
that therefore the street, in that part, is called Petty Wales;" and he
further adds: "The merchants of Burdeaux were licensed to build at the
Vintry, strongly with stone, as may yet be seen, and seemeth old though
oft repaired; much more cause have these buildings in Petty Wales...
to seem old, which, for many years, to wit, since the galleys left
their course of landing there, hath fallen to ruin."  It appears to
have been let out for many uses, some disreputable; and a certain
Mother Mampudding (of whom one would like to know more) kept a part of
the house for victualling.




CONTENTS

     I.  IN WHICH I LEARN FOR THE FIRST TIME THAT I HAVE AN UNCLE
    II.  IN WHICH PTOLEMY PHILPOT COMMENCES HIS STUDY OF THE LATIN
           TONGUE
   III.  HOW A BROTHER, HAVING OFFENDED, WAS FORGIVEN
    IV.  IN WHICH I SAY FAREWELL THRICE
     V.  PRINCIPALLY TELLS HOW SIR MATTHEW JUKE WAS CAST AWAY UPON THE
           HEBRIDES
    VI.  HOW THE OLD SCHOLAR AND I CAME TO LONDON
   VII.  IN WHICH I CONCEIVE A DISLIKE OF AN EARL'S SERVANT AND AN
           AFFECTION FOR A MAN OF LAW
  VIII.  A CHAPTER OF CHEATS
    IX.  TELLS HOW I CHANGED MY LODGING AND LOST MY MARE
     X.  HOW I SAW AN ENEMY AT THE WINDOW
    XI.  IS SUFFICIENT IN THAT IT TELLS OF IDONIA
   XII.  HOW MR. JORDAN COULD NOT RUN COUNTER TO THE COURSE OF NATURE
  XIII.  PETTY WALES
   XIV.  HOW IDONIA TAUGHT ME AND A CAPTAIN OF THE GUARD HOW TO KEEP
           BOOKS
    XV.  IN WHICH I BEGIN TO EARN MY LIVING
   XVI.  THE SIEGE OF PETTY WALES
  XVII.  HOW I FOUND AN OLD FRIEND IN A STRANGE PLACE, AND HOW PTOLEMY
           RENEWED HIS STUDY OF THE LATIN TONGUE
 XVIII.  IN WHICH I RECEIVE A COMMISSION AND SUFFER A CHECK
   XIX.  IN WHICH I COME TO GRIPS WITH MR. MALPAS
    XX.  THE ADVENTURE OF THE CHINESE JAR
   XXI.  THE "FAIR HAVEN" OF WAPPING
  XXII.  HOW MY UNCLE BOTOLPH LOST HIS LUCK
 XXIII.  THE VOYAGE OF THE _SARACEN'S HEAD_
  XXIV.  THE TEMPLE BENEATH THE WATERS
   XXV.  IN WHICH THE SHIPS OF WAR GO BY AND THE TALE ENDS




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS


THE GREAT LEDGER-BOOK--WHICH I NOW SAW
  TURNED TO AN ENGINE OF OUR SALVATION... _Frontispiece_

THE ARGUMENT BETWEEN MR. SKEGS AND PTOLEMY

MR. JORDAN REGARDED ME VERY MOURNFULLY

"YOU CANNOT BE IGNORANT THAT THIS AFFAIR IS
  LIKE TO END BADLY FOR YOU, MR. DENIS"




IDONIA



CHAPTER I

IN WHICH I LEARN FOR THE FIRST TIME THAT I HAVE AN UNCLE

The first remembrance I hold of my father is of a dark-suited tall man
of an unchanging gravity on all occasions.  He had, moreover, a manner
of saying "Ay, ay," which I early came to regard as the prologue to
some definite prohibition; as when I asked him (I being then but a
scrubbed boy) for his great sword, to give it to a crippled soldier at
our gate, who had lost his proper weapon in the foreign wars--

"Ay, ay," said my father, nodding his grey head, "so he lost his good
sword, and you would make good the loss with mine.  Ay, 'twas a
generous thought of yours, Denis, surely."

I was for reaching it down forthwith, where it hung by the wall in its
red velvet scabbard, delighted at the pleasure I was to do my bedesman.

"Go to your chamber, boy," said my father in a voice smaller than
ordinary.

"But, sir, the sword!" I cried.

"Ay, the sword," he replied, nodding as before.  "But, go warn Simon
Powell that he look to his poultry-lofts.  And learn wisdom, Denis, for
you have some need of it, in my judgment."

The same temperate behaviour he ever showed; granting little, and that
never to prayers, but sometimes upon good reasoning.  He seemed to have
put by anger as having no occasion for the use of it, anger being
neither buckler nor broadsword, he would say, but Tom Fool's motley.
This calmness of his, I say, it was I first remember, and it was this
too that put a distance between us; so that I grew from boyhood to nigh
manhood, that is until my eighteenth year, without any clear
understanding of what lay concealed behind his mask of quiet.  That he
had a passion for books I soon discovered, and the discovery confirmed
me in the foolish timidity with which I regarded him.  For hours
together would he sit in the little high room beyond the hall, his
beard buried in his ruff, while the men awaited his orders to go about
the harvesting, and would read continuously in his great folios: the
Lives of Plutarch, or Plato, or the Stoick Emperor, or other such
works, until the day was gone and all labour lost.  I have known our
overseer to swear horrid great oaths when he learned that Master Cleeve
had received a new parcel of books by the carrier, crying out that no
estate would sustain the burden of so much learning so ill applied.

Our house stood within a steep combe close under the Brendon hills, and
not far from the Channel, by which ships pass to Bristol, and
outward-bound to the open sea.  Many a time have I stood on a rise of
ground between the Abbey, whence it is said we take our name of Cleeve,
and the hamlet on the cliff above the seashore, gazing out upon the
brave show of ships with all sails set, the mariners hauling at the
ropes or leaning over the sides of their vessels; and wondered what
rich cargo it was they carried from outlandish ports, until a kind of
pity grew in me for my father in his little room with his rumpled ruff
and his Logick and Physick and Ethick, and his carrier's cart at the
door with Ethick and Physick and Logick over again.

At such times Simon Powell was often my companion, a lad of a strange
wild spirit, lately come out of Wales across the Channel, and one I
loved for the tales he had to tell of the admirable things that
happened long since in his country, and indeed, he said, lately too.  I
cannot call to mind the names of the host of princes that filled his
histories, save Arthur's only; but of their doings, and how they talked
familiarly with beasts and birds, and how they exchanged their proper
shapes at will, and how one of them bade his companions cut off his
head and bear it with them to the White Mount in London; which journey
of theirs continued during fourscore years; of all these marvels I have
still the memory, and of Simon Powell's manner of telling them, which
was very earnest, making one earnest who listened to him.

For ordinary teaching, that is, in Latin and divinity and arithmetick,
I was sent to one Mr. Jordan, who lived across the combe, in a sort of
hollow half way up the moor beyond, in a little house of but four
rooms, of which two were filled with books, and his bed stood in one of
them.  The other two rooms I believe he never entered, which were the
kitchen and the bedchamber.  For having dragged his bed, many years
before, into the room where he kept the most of his books, he found it
convenient, as he said, to observe this order ever afterwards; and
being an incredibly idle man, though a great and learned scholar, he
would lie in bed the best part of a summer's day and pluck out book
after book from their shelves, reading them half aloud, and only
interrupting his lecture for extraordinary purposes.  My father paid
him handsomely for my tuition, though I learned less from him than I
might have done from a far less learned man.  He was very old, and the
common talk was that he had been a clerk in the old Abbey before the
King's Commission closed it.  It was therefore strange that he taught
me so little divinity as he did, unless it were that the reading of
many pagan books had somewhat clouded his mind in this particular.  For
I am persuaded that for once he spoke of the Christian faith he spoke a
hundred times of Minerva and Apollo, and the whole rout of Atheistical
Deities which we rightly hold in abhorrence.

My chief occupation, when I was not at school with Mr. Jordan nor on
the hills with Simon, was to go about our estates, which, although they
were not very large, were fair, and on the whole well ordered.  Our
steward, for all his distaste of my father's sedentary habit, had a
reverence for him, and said he was a good master, though he would never
be a wealthy one.

"His worship's brother now," he once said, "who is, I think, one of the
great merchants of London, would make this valley as rich and
prosperous as any the Devon shipmasters have met with beyond the
Western Sea."

I asked him who was my uncle of whom he spoke, and of whom I heard for
the first time.

"'Tis Master Botolph Cleeve," he said.  "But his worship does not see
him this many a year, nor offer him entertainment since they drew upon
each other in the great hall."

"Here, in this house!" I cried, for this was all news to me, and
unsuspected.

"In this house it was, indeed, Master Denis," replied the steward,
"while you were a poor babe not yet two year old.  But there be some
things best forgotten," he added quickly, and began to walk towards
where the men were felling an alder tree by the combe-brook.

"Nay, Peter Sprot," I cried out, detaining him, "tell me all now, for
things cannot be forgotten, save they have first been spoken of."

He laughed a little at this boyish argument, but would not consent at
that time.  Indeed, it was near a year afterwards, and when I had
gained some authority about the estate, that he at length did as I
demanded.

It was a sweet spring morning (I remember) with a heaven full of big
white clouds come up from the westward over Dunkery on a high wind that
bent the saplings and set the branches in the great woods stirring.  We
had gone up the moor, behind Mr. Jordan's house, with the shepherd, to
recover a strayed sheep, which, about an hour before noon, the shepherd
chanced to espy a long way off, dead, and a mob of ravens over her,
buffeted about by the gale.  The shepherd immediately ran to the place,
where he beat off the ravens and afterwards took up the carcase on his
shoulders and went down the combe, leaving us twain together.

"It is not often that he loses any beast," said the steward.  "'Tis a
careful man among the flocks, though among the wenches, not so."

I know not why, but this character of the shepherd put me again in mind
of my uncle Botolph, upon whom I had not thought for a great while.

"Tell me, Peter Sprot," I said, "how it was my father and my uncle came
to fighting."

"Nay, they came not so far as to fight," cried the steward, with a
start.

"But they drew upon each other," said I.

He sat silent for a little, tugging at his rough hair, as was his wont
when he meditated deeply.

After awhile, "You never knew your lady mother," he said, in a deep
voice, "so that my tale must lack for that which should be chief of it.
For to all who knew her, the things which befell seemed a part of her
beauty, or rather to issue from it naturally, though, indeed, they were
very terrible.  Mr. Denis, it is the stream which runs by the old
course bursts the bridges in time of winter, and down the common ways
that trouble ever comes."

"But what trouble was in this," I asked, in the pause he