The Unfortunate Traveller and Other Works (54 page)

None won the day in this but the herring, whom all their clamorous suffrages saluted, with
Vive le Roy
, ‘God save the King, God save the King', save only the plaice and the butt, that made wry mouths at him, and for their mocking have wry mouths ever since, and the herring ever since wears a coronet on his head, in token that he is as he is. Which had the worst end of the staff in that sea journey or canvazado,
⁴⁰³
or whether some fowler with his nets (as this host of feather-mongers were getting up to ride double) involved or entangled them, or the water fowls played them false (as there is no more love betwixt them than betwixt sailors and land soldiers), and threw them off their backs, and let them drown when they were launched into the deep, I leave to some Alfonsus,
⁴⁰⁴
Poggius
⁴⁰⁵
or Aesope to unwrap, for my pen is tired in it. But this is notorious: the herring, from that time to this, hath gone with an army, and never stirs abroad without it. And when he stirs abroad with it, he sends out his scouts or sentinels before him, that oftentimes are intercepted, and by their parti-coloured liveries descried, whom the mariners after they have took, use in this sort: eight
or nine times they swinge them about the mainmast, and bid them bring them so many last
⁴⁰⁶
of herrings as they have swinged them times, and that shall be their ransome, and so throw them into the sea again. King, by your leave, for in your kingship I must leave you, and repeat how from white to red you chameleonized.

It is to be read, or to be heard of, how in the punyship or nonage
⁴⁰⁷
of Cerdick sands, when the best houses and walls there were of mud or canvas, or poldavies entiltments,
⁴⁰⁸
a fisherman of Yarmouth, having drawn so many herrings he wist not what to do withal, hung the residue that he could not sell nor spend in the sooty roof of his shed a-drying; or say thus, his shed was a cabinet in
decimo sexto
,
⁴⁰⁹
builded on four crutches, and he had no room in it but in that garret or
excelsis
⁴¹⁰
to lodge them, where if they were dry, let them be dry, for in the sea they had drunk too much, and now he would force them do penance for it.

The weather was cold, and good fires he kept (as fishermen, what hardness soever they endure at sea, they will make all smoke but they will make amends for it when they come to land), and what with his firing and smoking, or smoky firing, in that his narrow lobby, his herrings, which were as white as whale's bone when he hung them up, now looked as red as a lobster. It was four or five days before either he or his wife espied it, and when they espied it, they fell down on their knees and blessed themselves, and cried ‘A miracle, a miracle!' and with the proclaiming it among their neighbours they could not be content, but to the Court the fishermen would and present it to the King, then lying at Burgh Castle two miles off.

Of this Burgh Castle, because it is so ancient, and there hath been a city there, I will enter into some more special mention. The flood Waveney, running through many
owns of high Suffolk up to Bungey, and from thence encroaching nearer and nearer to the sea, with his twining and winding it cuts out an island of some amplitude, named Lovingland. The head town in that island is Leystofe,
⁴¹¹
in which be it known to all men I was born, though my father sprang from the Nashes of Herefordshire.

The next town from Leystofe towards Yarmouth is Gorton, and next Gorlston. More inwardly on the left hand, where Waveney and the river Jerus mix their waters, Cnoberi Urhs, the City of Cnober, at this day termed Burgh or Burgh Castle, had his being.

The city and castle, saith Bede and Master Camden, or rather Master Camden out of Bede, by the woods about it, and the driving of the sea up to it, was most pleasant. In it one Fursaeus, a Scot, builded a monastery, at whose persuasion Sigebert, King of the East Angles, gave over his kingdom and led a monastical life there; but forth of that monastery he was haled against his will, to encourage his subjects in their battle against the Mercians, where he perished with them.

Nothing of that castle save tattered
⁴¹²
ragged walls now remains, framed four-square and overgrown with briars and bushes, in the stubbing up of which, erstwhiles they dig up Roman coins, and buoys and anchors. Well, thither our fisherman set the best leg before, and unfardled
⁴¹³
to the King his whole satchel of wonders. The King was as superstitious in worshipping those miraculous herrings as the fisherman, licensed him to carry them up and down the realm for strange monsters, giving to Cerdick sands (the birth of such monstrosities) many privileges, and, in that the quantity of them that were caught so increased, he assigned a broken sluice in the Island of Lovingland, called Herring Fleet, where they should disburden and discharge their boats of them, and render him custom. Our herring
smoker, having won his monster's stall throughout England, spirted overseas to Rome with a pedlar's pack of them, in the papal chair of Vigilius, he that first instituted saints' eves or vigils to be fasted.
⁴¹⁴
By that time he came thither he had but three of his herrings left, for by the way he fell into the thievish hands of malcontents and of launce-knights,
⁴¹⁵
of whom he was not only robbed of all his money, but was fain to redeem his life besides with the better part of his ambry
⁴¹⁶
of burnished fishes.

These herrings three he rubbed and curried over
⁴¹⁷
till his arms ached again, to make them glow like a Turkie
⁴¹⁸
brooch or a London vintner's sign, thick-jagged, and round-fringed with theaming
⁴¹⁹
arsedine,
⁴²⁰
and folding them in a diaper napkin as lily-white as a ladies' marrying-smock, to the market-stead of Rome he was so bold as to prefer them; and there, on a high stool, unbraced and unlaced them to any chapman's eye that would buy them. The Pope's caterer, casting a lickerous
⁴²¹
glance that way, asked what it was he had to sell. ‘The King of Fishes', he answered. ‘The King of Fishes?' replied he. ‘What is the price of him?' ‘A hundred ducats', he told him. ‘A hundred ducats?' quoth the Pope's caterer. ‘That is a kingly price indeed. It is for no private man to deal with him.' ‘Then he is for me', said the fisherman, and so unsheathed his cuttle-bong,
⁴²²
and from the nape of the neck to the tail dismembered him and paunched him up at a mouthful. Home went his Beatitude's caterer with a flea in his ear, and discoursed to His Holiness what had happened. ‘Is it the King of Fishes?' The Pope frowningly shook him up like a cat in a blanket. ‘And is there any man to have him but I that am King of Kings and
Lord of Lords? Go, give him his price, I command thee, and let me taste of him incontinently.'
⁴²³
Back returned the caterer like a dog that had lost his tail, and poured down the herring merchant his hundred ducats for one of those two of the King of Fishes unsold; which then he would not take, but stood upon two hundred. Thereupon they broke off, the one urging that he had offered it him so before, and the other that he might have took him at his proffer, which since he refused and now halpered
⁴²⁴
with him, as he eat up the first, so would he eat up the second, and let Pope or Patriarch of Constantinople fetch it out of his belly if they could. He was as good as his word, and had no sooner spoke the word, but he did as he spoke. With a heavy heart to the palace the yeoman of the mouth departed, and rehearsed this second ill success, wherewith Peter's successor was so in his mulligrums
⁴²⁵
that he had thought to have buffeted him and cursed him with bell, book and candle; but he ruled his reason, and bade him, though it cost a million, to let him have that third that rested behind, and hie him expeditely thither, lest some other snatched it up, and as fast from thence again, for he swore by his triple crown, no crum of refection would he gnaw upon, till he had sweetened his lips with it.

So said, so done. Thither he flew as swift as Mercury, and threw him his two hundred ducats as before demanded. It would not fadge,
⁴²⁶
for then the market was raised to three hundred, and the caterer grumbling thereat, the fisher swain was forward to fettle him to his tools, and tire upon it, as on the other two, had not he held his hands and desired him to keep the peace, for no money should part them. With that speech he was qualified, and pursed the three hundred ducats, and delivered him the King of Fishes, teaching him how to geremumble
⁴²⁷
it, sauce it, and dress it, and so sent him away a glad man. All the Pope's cooks in their white
sleeves and linen aprons met him middle way, to entertain and receive the King of Fishes, and together by the ears they went, who should first handle him or touch him. But the clerk of the kitchen appeased that strife, and would admit none but himself to have the scorching and carbonadoing of it, and he kissed his hand thrice, and made as many humblessos ere he would finger it; and such obeisances performed, he dressed it as he was enjoined, kneeling on his knees and mumbling twenty Ave Mary's to himself in the sacrificing of it on the coals, that his diligent service in the broiling and combustion of it, both to his Kingship and to his Fatherhood, might not seem unmeritorious. The fire had not pierced it, but it being a sweaty loggerhead greasy sowter,
⁴²⁸
endungeoned in his pocket a twelvemonth, stunk so over the Pope's palace, that not a scullion but cried ‘Foh!', and those which at the first flocked the fastest about it now fled the most from it, and sought more to rid their hands of it than before they sought to bless their hands with it. With much stopping of their noses, between two dishes they stewed it and served it up. It was not come within three chambers of the Pope but he smelt it, and upon smelling of it enquiring what it should be that sent forth such a puissant perfume, the standers-by declared that it was the King of Fishes. ‘I conceited no less,' said the Pope, ‘for less than a king he could not be that had so strong a scent. And if his breath be so strong, what is he himself? Like a great king, like a strong king, I will use him. Let him be carried back, I say, and my Cardinals shall fetch him in with dirge and processions under my canopy.'

Though they were double and double weary of him, yet his edict being a law, to the kitchen they returned him, whither by and by the whole College of scarlet Cardinals, with their crosiers, their censers, their hostes, their
Agnus Dei's
and crucifixes, flocked together in heaps as it had been to the conclave or a general council, and the senior Cardinal that stood next in election to be Pope, heaved him up from
the dresser with a dirge of
De profundis natus est fex
;
⁴²⁹
rex
he should have said, and so have made true Latin, but the spirable
⁴³⁰
odour and pestilent steam ascending from it put him out of his bias of congruity, and, as true as the truest Latin of Priscian, would have queazened
⁴³¹
him like the damp that ‘took both Bell and Baram
⁴³²
away, and many a worthy man that day', if he had not been protected under the Pope's canopy, and the other Cardinals, with their holy-water sprinkles, quenched his foggy fume and evaporating. About and about the inward and base court they circumducted him, with Kyrie Eleison and Halleluiah, and the chanters in their golden copes and white surplices chanted it out above
gloria patri
in praising of him. The organs played, the ordnance at the Castle of Saint Angelo's went off, and all wind instruments blew as loud as the wind in winter in his passado
⁴³³
to the Pope's ordinary or dining chamber, where having set him down, upon their faces they fell flat, and licked every one his ell of dust, in ducking on all four unto him.

The busy epitasis
⁴³⁴
of the comedy was when the dishes were uncovered and the swarthrutter sour
⁴³⁵
took air. For then he made such an air, as Alcides himself that cleansed the stables of Augaeus nor any hostler was able to endure.

This at once, the Pope it popped under-board, and out of his palace worse it scared him than Neptune's Phocases,
⁴³⁶
that scared the horses of Hippolytus, or the harpies, Jupiter's dogs, sent to vex Phineus.
⁴³⁷
The Cardinals were at their
ora pro nobis
, and held this suffocation a meet sufferance for
so contemning the King of Fishes and his subjects, and fleshly surfeiting in their carnivals. ‘Negromantick sorcery, negromantick sorcery, some evil spirit of an heretic it is which thus molesteth his Apostolicship!' The friars and monks caterwauled, from the abbots and priors to the novices, ‘wherefore
tanquam in circo
,
⁴³⁸
we will trounce him in a circle, and make him tell what lanternman or groom of Hecate's close-stool
⁴³⁹
he is that thus nefariously and proditoriously
⁴⁴⁰
prophanes and penetrates our holy father's nostrils'. What needs there any more embages?
⁴⁴¹
The ring-roll
⁴⁴²
or ringed circle was compassed and chalked out, and the King of Fishes, by the name of the King of Fishes, conjured to appear in the centre of it. But
surdo cantant absurdi, sive surdum incantant fratres sordidi
:
⁴⁴³
he was a king absolute, would not be at every man's call, and if Friar Pendela
⁴⁴⁴
and his fellows had anything to say to him, in his admiral court of the sea let them seek him, and neither in Hull, Hell nor Halifax.

They, seeing that by their charms and spells they could spell nothing of him, fell to a more charitable purpose, that it might be the distressed soul of some king that was drowned, who, being long in Purgatory, and not relieved by the prayers of the Church, had leave in that disguised form to have egress and regress to Rome, to crave their benevolences of dirges, trentals
⁴⁴⁵
and so forth, to help him onward on his journey to
Limbo patrum
⁴⁴⁶
or Elisium, and because they would not easily believe what tortures in Purgatory he had sustained unless they were eye-witnesses of them, he thought to represent to all their senses the image and idea of his combustion and broiling there, and the horrible stench of
his sins accompanying, both under his frying and broiling on the coals in the Pope's kitchen, and the intolerable smell or stink he sent forth under either.
Una voce
⁴⁴⁷
in this spleen to Pope Vigilius they ran, and craved that this King of Fishes might first have Christian burial; next, that he might have masses sung for him; and last, that for a saint he would canonize him. All these he granted, to be rid of his filthy redolence, and his chief casket wherein he put all his jewels he made the coffin of his enclosure, and for his ensainting, look the almanac in the beginning of April, and see if you can find out such a saint as Saint Gildarde, which in honour of this gilded fish the Pope so ensainted. Nor there he rested and stopped, but in the mitigation of the very embers whereupon he was singed (that after he was taken off them, fumed most fulsomely of his fatty droppings) he ordained ember weeks in their memory to be fasted everlastingly.