How Mabel was received
by the Party in the Kitchen And of
the Quarrel between
the two Jesters.
Addressing himself to a stout-built
yeoman of the guard, who was standing within the doorway,
Nicholas Clamp demanded admittance to the kitchen,
and the man having detained them for a few moments,
during which he regarded Mabel with a very offensive
stare, ushered them into a small hall, and from thence
into a narrow passage connected with it. Lighted
by narrow loopholes pierced through the walls, which
were of immense thickness, this passage described
the outer side of the whole upper quadrangle, and
communicated with many other lateral passages and
winding stairs leading to the chambers allotted to
the household or to the state apartments. Tracking
it for some time, Nicholas Clamp at length turned
off on the right, and, crossing a sort of ante-room,
led the way into a large chamber with stone walls
and a coved and groined roof, lighted by a great window
at the lower end. This was the royal kitchen,
and in it yawned no fewer than seven huge arched fireplaces,
in which fires were burning, and before which various
goodly joints were being roasted, while a number of
cooks and scullions were congregated round them.
At a large table in the centre of the kitchen were
seated some half-dozen yeomen of the guard, together
with the clerk of the kitchen, the chief bargeman,
and the royal cutler, or bladesmith, as he was termed.
These worthies were doing ample justice
to a chine of beef, a wild-boar pie, a couple of fat
capóns, a peacock pasty, a mess of pickled lobsters,
and other excellent and inviting dishes with which
the board was loaded. Neither did they neglect
to wash down the viands with copious draughts of ale
and mead from great pots and flagons placed beside
them. Behind this party stood Giovanni Joungevello,
an Italian minstrel, much in favour with Anne Boleyn,
and Domingo Lamellino, or Lamelyn as he
was familiarly termed a Lombard, who pretended
to some knowledge of chirurgery, astrology, and alchemy,
and who was a constant attendant on Henry. At
the head of the bench, on the right of the table,
sat Will Sommers. The jester was not partaking
of the repast, but was chatting with Simon Quanden,
the chief cook, a good-humoured personage, round-bellied
as a tun, and blessed with a spouse, yclept Deborah,
as fond of good cheer, as fat, and as good-humoured
as himself. Behind the cook stood the cellarman,
known by the appellation of Jack of the Bottles, and
at his feet were two playful little turnspits, with
long backs, and short forelegs, as crooked almost
as sickles.
On seeing Mabel, Will Sommers immediately
arose, and advancing towards her with a mincing step,
bowed with an air of mock ceremony, and said in an
affected tone, “Welcome, fair mistress, to the
king’s kitchen. We are all right glad to
see you; are we not, mates?”
“Ay, that we are!” replied a chorus of
voices.
“By my troth, the wench is wondrously
beautiful!” said Kit Coo, one of the yeomen
of the guard.
“No wonder the king is smitten
with her,” said Launcelot Rutter, the bladesmith;
“her eyes shine like a dagger’s point.”
“And she carries herself like
a wafter on the river,” said the bargeman.
“Her complexion is as good as
if I had given her some of my sovereign balsam of
beauty,” said Domingo Lamelyn.
“Much better,” observed
Joungevello, the minstrel; “I shall write a
canzonet in her praise, and sing it before the king.”
“And get flouted for thy pains
by the Lady Anne,” said Kit Coo.
“The damsel is not so comely
as I expected to find her,” observed Amice Lovekyn,
one of the serving-women, to Hector Cutbeard, the clerk
of the kitchen.
“Why, if you come to that, she
is not to be compared to you, pretty Amice,”
said Cutbeard, who was a red-nosed, red-faced fellow,
with a twinkling merry eye.
“Nay, I meant not that,” replied Amice,
retreating.
“Excuse my getting up to receive
you, fair mistress,” cried Simon Quanden, who
seemed fixed to his chair; “I have been bustling
about all day, and am sore fatigued sore
fatigued. But will you not take something?
A sugared cate, and a glass of hypocras jelly,
or a slice of capon? Go to the damsel, dame,
and prevail on her to eat.”
“That will I,” replied
Deborah. “What shall it be, sweetheart?
We have a well-stored larder here. You have only
to ask and have.”
“I thank you, but I am in want
of nothing,” replied Mabel.
“Nay, that is against all rule,
sweetheart,” said Deborah; “no one enters
the king’s kitchen without tasting his royal
cheer.”
“I am sorry I must prove an
exception, then,” returned Mabel, smiling; “for
I have no appetite.”
“Well, well, I will not force
you to eat against your will,” replied the good
dame “But a cup of wine will do you good after
your walk.”
“I will wait upon her,”
said the Duke of Shoreditch.’ who vied with
Paddington and Nick Clamp in attention to the damsel.
“Let me pray you to cast your
eyes upon these two dogs, fair Mabel,” said
Will Sommers, pointing to the two turn-spits, “they
are special favourites of the king’s highness.
They are much attached to the cook, their master;
but their chief love is towards each other, and nothing
can keep them apart.”
“Will Sommers speaks the truth,”
rejoined Simon Quanden. “Hob and Nob, for
so they are named, are fast friends. When Hob
gets into the box to turn the spit, Nob will watch
beside it till his brother is tired, and then he will
take his place. They always eat out of the same
platter, and drink out of the same cup. I once
separated them for a few hours to see what would happen,
but they howled so piteously, that I was forced to
bring them together again. It would have done
your heart good to witness their meeting, and to see
how they leaped and rolled with delight. Here,
Hob,” he added, taking a cake from his apron
pocket, “divide this with thy brother.”
Placing his paws upon his master’s
knees, the nearest turnspit took the cake in his mouth,
and proceeding towards Nob, broke it into two pieces,
and pushed the larger portion towards him.
While Mabel was admiring this display
of sagacity and affection a bustling step was heard
behind her, and turning, she beheld a strange figure
in a parti-coloured gown and hose, with a fool’s
cap and bells on his head, whom she immediately recognised
as the cardinal’s jester, Patch. The new-comer
recognised her too, stared in astonishment, and gave
a leering look at Will Sommers.
“What brings you here, gossip
Patch?” cried Will Sommers. “I thought
you were in attendance upon your master, at the court
at Blackfriars.”
“So I have been,” replied
Patch, “and I am only just arrived with his
grace.”
“What! is the decision pronounced?”
cried Will Sommers eagerly. “Is the queen
divorced? Is the king single again? Let us
hear the sentence.”
“Ay, the sentence! the
sentence!” resounded on all hands.
Stimulated by curiosity, the whole
of the party rose from the table; Simon Quanden got
out of his chair; the other cooks left their joints
to scorch at the fire; the scullions suspended their
work; and Hob and Nob fixed their large inquiring
black eyes upon the jester.
“I never talk thirsting,”
said Patch, marching to the table, and filling himself
a flagon of mead. “Here’s to you,
fair maiden,” he added, kissing the cup to Mabel,
and swallowing its contents at a draught. “And
now be seated, my masters, and you shall hear all I
have to relate, and it will be told in a few words.
The court is adjourned for three days, Queen Catherine
having demanded that time to prepare her allegations,
and the delay has been granted her.”
“Pest on it! the
delay is some trick of your crafty and double-dealing
master,” cried Will Sommers. “Were
I the king, I know how I would deal with him.”
“What wouldst thou do, thou
scurril knave?” cried Patch angrily.
“I would strip him of his ill-gotten
wealth, and leave him only thee a fitting
attendant of all his thousand servitors,”
replied Will.
“This shall to his grace’s
ears,” screamed Patch, amid the laughter of
the company “and see whether your
back does not smart for it.”
“I fear him not,” replied
Will Sommers. “I have not yet told the king
my master of the rare wine we found in his cellar.”
“What wine was that, Will?” cried Jack
of the Bottles.
“You shall hear,” replied
Will Sommers, enjoying the disconcerted look of the
other jester. “I was at the palace at Hampton,
when this scant-witted knave invited me to taste some
of his master’s wine, and accordingly to the
cellar we went. ‘This wine will surprise
you,’ quoth he, as we broached the first hogshead.
And truly it did surprise me, for no wine followed
the gimlet. So we went on to another, and another,
and another, till we tried half a score of them, and
all with the same result. Upon this I seized
a hammer which was lying by and sounded the casks,
but none of them seeming empty, I at last broke the
lid of one and what do you think it contained?”
A variety of responses were returned
by the laughing assemblage, during which Patch sought
to impose silence upon his opponent. But Will
Sommers was not to be checked.
“It contained neither vinegar,
nor oil, nor lead,” he said, “but gold;
ay, solid bars of gold-ingots. Every hogshead
was worth ten thousand pounds, and more.”
“Credit him not, my masters,”
cried Patch, amid the roars of the company; “the
whole is a mere fable an invention.
His grace has no such treasure. The truth is,
Will Sommers got drunk upon some choice Malmsey, and
then dreamed he had been broaching casks of gold.”
“It is no fable, as you and
your master will find when the king comes to sift
the matter,” replied Will. “This will
be a richer result to him than was ever produced by
your alchemical experiments, good Signor Domingo Lamelyn.”
“It is false! I say
false!” screamed Patch, “let the cellars
be searched, and I will stake my head nothing is found.”
“Stake thy cap, and there may
be some meaning in it,” said Will, plucking
Patch’s cap from his head and elevating it on
his truncheon. “Here is an emblem of the
Cardinal of York,” he cried, pointing to it.
A roar of laughter from the company
followed this sally, and Hob and Nob looked up in
placid wonderment.
“I shall die with laughing,”
cried Simon Quanden, holding his fat sides, and addressing
his spouse, who was leaning upon his shoulder.
In the meantime Patch sprang to his
feet, and, gesticulating with rage and fury, cried,
“Thou hast done well to steal my cap and bells,
for they belong of right to thee. Add my folly
to thy own, and thou wilt be a fitting servant to
thy master; or e’en give him the cap, and then
there will be a pair of ye.”
“Who is the fool now, I should
like to know?” rejoined Will Sommers gravely.
“I call you all to witness that he has spoken
treason.”
While this was passing Shoreditch
had advanced with a flagon of Malmsey to Mabel, but
she was so interested in the quarrel between the two
jesters that she heeded him not; neither did she attend
to Nicholas Clamp, who was trying to explain to her
what was going forward. But just as Patch’s
indiscreet speech was uttered an usher entered the
kitchen and announced the approach of the king.