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WE left John Canty dragging the rightful prince into Offal
Court, with a noisy and delighted mob at his heels. There was but
one person in it who offered a pleading word for the captive, and he
was not heeded; he was hardly even heard, so great was the turmoil.
The prince continued to struggle for freedom, and to rage against
the treatment he was suffering, until John Canty lost what little
patience was left in him, and raised his oaken cudgel in a sudden fury
over the prince's head. The single pleader for the lad sprang to
stop the man's arm, and the blow descended upon his own wrist. Canty
roared out:
'Thou'lt meddle, wilt thou? Then have thy reward.'
His cudgel crashed down upon the meddler's head; there was a
groan, a dim form sank to the ground among the feet of the crowd,
and the next moment it lay there in the dark alone. The mob pressed
on, their enjoyment nothing disturbed by this episode.
Presently the prince found himself in John Canty's abode, with the
door closed against the outsiders. By the vague light of a tallow
candle which was thrust into a bottle, he made out the main features
of the loathsome den, and also of the occupants of it. Two frowsy
girls and a middle-aged woman cowered against the wall in one
corner, with the aspect of animals habituated to harsh usage, and
expecting and dreading it now. From another corner stole a withered
hag with streaming gray hair and malignant eyes. John Canty said to
this one:
'Tarry! There's fine mummeries here. Mar them not till thou'st
enjoyed them; then let thy hand be heavy as thou wilt. Stand forth,
lad. Now say thy foolery again, an thou'st not forget it. Name thy
name. Who art thou?'
The insulted blood mounted to the little prince's cheek once more,
and he lifted a steady and indignant gaze to the man's face, and said:
''Tis but ill-breeding in such as thou to command me to speak. I
tell thee now, as I told thee before, I am Edward, Prince of Wales,
and none other.'
The stunning surprise of this reply nailed the hag's feet to the
floor where she stood, and almost took her breath. She stared at the
prince in stupid amazement, which so amused her ruffianly son that
he burst into a roar of laughter. But the effect upon Tom Canty's
mother and sisters was different. Their dread of bodily injury gave
way at once to distress of a different sort. They ran forward with woe
and dismay in their faces, exclaiming:
'Oh, poor Tom, poor lad!'
The mother fell on her knees before the prince, put her hands upon
his shoulders, and gazed yearningly into his face through her rising
tears. Then she said:
'Oh, my poor boy! thy foolish reading hath wrought its woeful work
at last, and ta'en thy wit away. Ah! why didst thou cleave to it
when I so warned thee 'gainst it? Thou'st broke thy mother's heart.'
The prince looked into her face, and said gently:
'Thy son is well and hath not lost his wits, good dame. Comfort
thee; let me to the palace where he is, and straightway will the
king my father restore him to thee.'
'The king thy father! Oh, my child! unsay these words that be
freighted with death for thee, and ruin for all that be near to
thee. Shake off this gruesome dream. Call back thy poor wandering
memory. Look upon me. Am not I thy mother that bore thee, and loveth
thee?'
The prince shook his head, and reluctantly said:
'God knoweth I am loath to grieve thy heart; but truly have I
never looked upon thy face before.'
The woman sank back to a sitting posture on the floor, and,
covering her eyes with her hands, gave way to heartbroken sobs and
wailings.
'Let the show go on!' shouted Canty. 'What, Nan! what, Bet!
Mannerless wenches! will ye stand in the prince's presence? Upon
your knees, ye pauper scum, and do him reverence!'
He followed this with another horse-laugh. The girls began to
plead timidly for their brother; and Nan said:
'An thou wilt but let him to bed, father, rest and sleep will heal
his madness; prithee, do.'
'Do, father,' said Bet; 'he is more worn than is his wont.
To-morrow will he be himself again, and will beg with diligence, and
come not empty home again.'
This remark sobered the father's joviality, and brought his mind
to business. He turned angrily upon the prince, and said:
'The morrow must we pay two pennies to him that owns this hole;
two pennies mark ye- all this money for a half-year's rent, else out
of this we go. Show what thou'st gathered with thy lazy begging.'
The prince said:
'Offend me not with thy sordid matters. I tell thee again I am the
king's son.'
A sounding blow upon the prince's shoulder from Canty's broad palm
sent him staggering into good-wife Canty's arms, who clasped him to
her breast, and sheltered him from a pelting rain of cuffs and slaps
by interposing her own person.
The frightened girls retreated to their corner; but the
grandmother stepped eagerly forward to assist her son. The prince
sprang away from Mrs. Canty, exclaiming:
'Thou shalt not suffer for me, madam. Let these swine do their
will upon me alone.'
This speech infuriated the swine to such a degree that they set
about their work without waste of time. Between them they belabored
the boy right soundly, and then gave the girls and their mother a
beating for showing sympathy for the victim.
'Now,' said Canty, 'to bed, all of ye. The entertainment has tired
me.'
The light was put out, and the family retired. As soon as the
snorings of the head of the house and his mother showed that they were
asleep, the young girls crept to where the prince lay, and covered him
tenderly from the cold with straw and rags; and their mother crept
to him also, and stroked his hair, and cried over him, whispering
broken words of comfort and compassion in his ear the while. She had
saved a morsel for him to eat also; but the boy's pains had swept away
all appetite- at least for black and tasteless crusts. He was
touched by her brave and costly defense of him, and by her
commiseration; and he thanked her in very noble and princely words,
and begged her to go to sleep and try to forget her sorrows. And he
added that the king his father would not let her loyal kindness and
devotion go unrewarded. This return to his 'madness' broke her heart
anew, and she strained him to her breast again and again and then went
back, drowned in tears, to her bed.
As she lay thinking and mourning, the suggestion began to creep
into her mind that there was an undefinable something about this boy
that was lacking in Tom Canty, mad or sane. She could not describe it,
she could not tell just what it was, and yet her sharp mother-instinct
seemed to detect it and perceive it. What if the boy were really not
her son, after all? Oh, absurd! She almost smiled at the idea, spite
of her griefs and troubles. No matter, she found that it was an idea
that would not 'down', but persisted in haunting her. It pursued
her, it harassed her, it clung to her, and refused to be put away or
ignored. At last she perceived that there was not going to be any
peace for her until she should devise a test that should prove, dearly
and without question, whether this lad was her son or not, and so
banish these wearing and worrying doubts. Ah, yes, this was plainly
the right way out of the difficulty; therefore, she set her wits to
work at once to contrive that test. But it was an easier thing to
propose than to accomplish. She turned over in her mind one
promising test after another, but was obliged to relinquish them
all- none of them were absolutely sure, absolutely perfect; and an
imperfect one could not satisfy her. Evidently she was racking her
head in vain- it seemed manifest that she must give the matter up.
While this depressing thought was passing through her mind, her ear
caught the regular breathing of the boy, and she knew he had fallen
asleep. And while she listened, the measured breathing was broken by a
soft, startled cry, such as one utters in a troubled dream. This
chance occurrence furnished her instantly with a plan worth all her
labored tests combined. She at once set herself feverishly, but
noiselessly, to work to relight her candle, muttering to herself, 'Had
I but seen him then, I should have known! Since that day, when he
was little, that the powder burst in his face, he hath never been
startled of a sudden out of his dreams or out of his thinkings, but he
hath cast his hand before his eyes, even as he did that day, and not
as others would do it, with the palm inward, but always with the
palm turned outward- I have seen it a hundred times, and it hath never
varied nor ever failed. Yes, I shall soon know now!'
By this time she had crept to the slumbering boy's side, with
the candle shaded in her hand. She bent heedfully and warily over him,
scarcely breathing, in her suppressed excitement, and suddenly flashed
the light in his face and struck the floor by his ear with her
knuckles. The sleeper's eyes sprung wide open, and he cast a
startled stare about him- but he made no special movement with his
hands.
The poor woman was smitten almost helpless with surprise and
grief; but she contrived to hide her emotions, and to soothe the boy
to sleep again; then she crept apart and communed miserably with
herself upon the disastrous result of her experiment. She tried to
believe that her Tom's madness had banished this habitual gesture of
his; but she could not do it. 'No,' she said, 'his hands are not
mad, they could not unlearn so old a habit in so brief a time. Oh,
this is a heavy day for me!'
Still, hope was as stubborn now as doubt had been before; she
could not bring herself to accept the verdict of the test; she must
try the thing again- the failure must have been only an accident; so
she startled the boy out of his sleep a second and a third time, at
intervals- with the same result which had marked the first test-
then she dragged herself to bed, and fell sorrowfully asleep,
saying, 'But I cannot give him up- oh, no, I cannot- he must be my
boy!'
The poor mother's interruptions having ceased, and the prince's
pains having gradually lost their power to disturb him, utter
weariness at last sealed his eyes in a profound and restful sleep.
Hour after hour slipped away, and still he slept like the dead. Thus
four or five hours passed. Then his stupor began to lighten.
Presently, while half asleep and half awake, he murmured:
'Sir William!'
After a moment:
'Ho, Sir William Herbert! Hie thee hither, and list to the
strangest dream that ever.... Sir William! Dost hear? Man, I did think
me changed to a pauper, and... Ho there! Guards! Sir William! What! is
there no groom of the chamber in waiting? Alack it shall go hard
with-'
'What aileth thee?' asked a whisper near him. 'Who art thou
calling?'
'Sir William Herbert. Who art thou?'
'I? Who should I be, but thy sister Nan? Oh, Tom, I had forgot!
Tbou'rt mad yet- poor lad thou'rt mad yet, would I had never woke to
know it again! But, prithee, master thy tongue, lest we be all
beaten till we die!'
The startled prince sprang partly up, but a sharp reminder from
his stiffened bruises brought him to himself, and he sunk back among
his foul straw with a moan and the ejaculation:
'Alas, it was no dream, then!'
In a moment all the heavy sorrow and misery which sleep had
banished were upon him again, and he realized that he was no longer
a petted prince in a palace, with the adoring eyes of a nation upon
him, but a pauper, an outcast, clothed in rags, prisoner in a den
fit only for beasts, and consorting with beggars and thieves.
In the midst of his grief he began to be conscious of hilarious
noises and shoutings, apparently but a block or two away. The next
moment there were several sharp raps at the door; John Canty ceased
from snoring and said:
'Who knocketh? What wilt thou?'
A voice answered:
'Know'st thou who it was thou laid thy cudgel on?'
'No. Neither know I, nor care.'
'Belike thou'lt change thy note eftsoons. An thou would save thy
neck, nothing but flight may stead thee. The man is this moment
delivering up the ghost. 'Tis the priest, Father Andrew!'
'God-a-mercy!' exclaimed Canty. He roused his family, and hoarsely
commanded, 'Up with ye all and fly- or bide where ye are and perish!'
Scarcely five minutes later the Canty household were in the street
and flying for their lives. John Canty held the prince by the wrist,
and hurried him along the dark way, giving him this caution in a low
voice:
'Mind thy tongue, thou mad fool, and speak not our name. I will
choose me a new name, speedily, to throw the law's dogs off the scent.
Mind thy tongue, I tell thee!'
He growled these words to the rest of the family:
'If it so chance that we be separated, let each make for London
Bridge; whoso findeth himself as far as the last linen-draper's shop
on the bridge, let him tarry there till the others be come, then
will we flee into Southwark together.'
At this moment the party burst suddenly out of darkness into
light; and not only into light, but into the midst of a multitude of
singing, dancing, and shouting people, massed together on the
river-frontage. There was a line of bonfires stretching as far as
one could see, up and down the Thames; London Bridge was
illuminated; Southwark Bridge likewise; the entire river was aglow
with the flash and sheen of colored lights, and constant explosions of
fireworks filled the skies with an intricate commingling of shooting
splendors and a thick rain of dazzling sparks that almost turned night
into day; everywhere were crowds of revelers; all London seemed to
be at large.
John Canty delivered himself of a furious curse and commanded a
retreat; but it was too late. He and his tribe were swallowed up in
that swarming hive of humanity, and hopelessly separated from each
other in an instant. We are not considering that the prince was one of
his tribe; Canty still kept his grip upon him. The prince's heart
was beating high with hopes of escape now. A burly waterman,
considerably exalted with liquor, found himself rudely shoved by Canty
in his efforts to plow through the crowd; he laid his great hand on
Canty's shoulder and said:
'Nay, whither so fast, friend? Dost canker thy soul with sordid
business when all that be leal men and true make holiday?'
'Mine affairs are mine own, they concern thee not,' answered
Canty, roughly; 'take away thy hand and let me pass.'
'Sith that is thy humor, thou'lt not pass till thou'st drunk to
the Prince of Wales, I tell thee that,' said the waterman, barring the
way resolutely.
'Give me the cup, then, and make speed, make speed.'
Other revelers were interested by this time. They cried out:
'The loving-cup, the loving-cup! make the sour knave drink the
loving-cup, else will we feed him to the fishes.'
So a huge loving-cup was brought; the waterman, grasping it by one
of its handles, and with his other hand bearing up the end of an
imaginary napkin, presented it in due and ancient form to Canty, who
had to grasp the opposite handle with one of his hands and take off
the lid with the other, according to ancient custom.*(6) This left the
prince hand-free for a second, of course. He wasted no time, but dived
among the forest of legs about him and disappeared. In another
moment he could not have been harder to find, under that tossing sea
of life, if its billows had been the Atlantic's and he a lost
sixpence.
He very soon realized this fact, and straightway busied himself
about his own affairs without further thought of John Canty. He
quickly realized another thing, too. To wit, that a spurious Prince of
Wales was being feasted by the city in his stead. He easily
concluded that the pauper lad, Tom Canty, had deliberately taken
advantage of his stupendous opportunity and become a usurper.
Therefore there was but one course to pursue- find his way to
the Guildhall, make himself known, and denounce the impostor. He
also made up his mind that Tom should be allowed a reasonable time for
spiritual preparation, and then be hanged, drawn, and quartered,
according to the law and usage of the day, in cases of high treason.
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