Chapter IV: Part 4

“God save you, sir. It is breathing in every ward both north and south of Holborn, Cheapside and Fenchurch, and as far west as Gray’s Inn and Temple Bar. Red paint has gone up in price, I hear, for nearly every house owner has had to buy some to daub the cross on his door. I saw one man fall on Coleman street to-day, and in less than an hour he was dead in the alley where they had moved him. Oh, man! it would be well for you, if you had never ventured in from the fields; for I see that you have the healthful looking face and air of a countryman.”

“Does one die quickly?” asked Tabbard, with a quaver in his voice.

“Too quickly to send either for doctor, or priest, in some cases,” replied Gyves.

“And is there no help?”

“Little before and none after the black spots appear.”

“And do many die?”

“Thousands.”

“Near here?” inquired Tabbard, shuddering as he looked at the gloomy buildings around him.

“Nay, mostly in the dwellings and tenements. With one death in the family, you can count that every member will follow. Ah! here is the Windmill.”

They turned from the sidewalk to mount the steps leading to the tavern. The building was a quaint structure built by the Jews at least three hundred years before. Once a synagogue, next a dwelling and then a tavern, it had, despite all these changes in its use, maintained some of the characteristics of each. Like a minister, who had become a soldier and then deserted for some safer but less honorable calling, it had retained an outward expression of sanctity in the narrow, pointed lancet-windows in its front and its six-columned portico; while, as evidence of its passage through an intermediate period, oriel windows jutted out from what might be second and third stories. The painting of a windmill, hanging between the two middle columns of the portico, published the present purposes of the place with as loud a flourish as trumpets might announce.

Into what was once the inner narthex of the synagogue, they passed. A stone floor was under foot, while a low vaulted ceiling rose overhead, its base being supported by attached columns with decorated capitals and elaborately carved corbels. Here, where devout Hebrews had once paused to arrange their gabardines, or stamp thoughts of usury for one short session from their minds before entering the body of the church, the sacrilegious Gentile had set his snares of destruction. It had become the tap-room of the tavern.

Near the foot of the rood-stair, which once led to the gallery, stood a brilliantly lighted bar, with a range of butts of Malmsey, kegs of beer and sack, deep in the recess behind it; and on the near shelves, against a bastard wall, was a glittering line of decanters, mugs and tankards.

The heavy round tables were encircled by many persons drinking under suspended lamps, and several groups of men were standing here and there on the sanded floor. A quietness, except for the low buzz of conversation and an occasional laugh, pervaded the room, thus speaking well for the sobriety of the inmates and the respectability of the tavern; still the crowd was as mixed as could be found anywhere except in the middle aisle of St. Paul’s. There, in the nave of that famous cathedral, dedicated to pious uses, in the aisles, before the ambries, and beside the font, during intervals between divine service, horsemen, usurers, cut-throats, beggars, bargainers of all kinds, doctors, lawyers and noblemen, plied their avocations, held their meetings, hatched their conspiracies and settled accounts.

Here there were no beggars, such being barred entrance; but their tatters could be seen on the portico whenever the door swung open. But men, in apparel fit for noblemen, walked in and out; others, with the hardened visages of men who dreamt continually of the gallows and shuddered at every flash of light across their paths, drank at the bar, or gathered under some of the isolated columns.

At one table was a country squire in dun-colored serge coat, with full bearded face, bending over a trencher filled with a half devoured pheasant. Before him was his city cousin, in velvet cap, with a lovelock suspended from under the green rim down across his ruffled collar. Decorated with pointed mustachios and framed in powdered periwig and high ruff, he was typical of the dandy of the period.

If the raw-boned, ungainly young man, with repellant features, who monopolized the conversation at another table, was not Ben Jonson [note 33], then Gyves, who pointed him out to Tabbard, had selected some one who looked enough like that genius, just rising to eminence, to be confounded with him.

“He is an actor,” said Gyves, “who lately returned from the Low Countries with the company of soldiers of which he was a volunteer, a most companionable man: can drink deeper and swear louder than any one around him.”

“Doth he make no choice of companions?” questioned Tabbard, noticing that some of the group looked misplaced anywhere but dangling from a gibbet’s arm.

“Not he,” said Gyves, “according to his stories, he has messed with the worst of the cut-throats of the Straits, kept by the side of clapperdoggers on their rounds, learned all the slang of the purlieus of Cheapside, and would as lief hobnob with a ruffler as with a nobleman or parish priest.”

“Hath he good sense?”

“The very best, I think, for I heard the Justice say that he wrote plays of the people, and must mingle with them to learn their ways.”

By this time they had approached a vacant table, and as Tabbard seated himself with pretended difficulty, he said, “Now sit you there; my friend, and have one cup with me before you venture out.”

Gyves required no second invitation.

“’Tis a bad night to hunt the highways for clapperdoggers,” said he, as he dropped into a chair, and pulling his whiskers glanced around the room with an air of familiarity as great as that of a chained mastiff in his own kennel.

“Is it a beggar you are after?” asked Tabbard with a forced air of unconcern.

“Not exactly, and I correct my expression,” returned Gyves, “but one even less harmful.”

“Some poor devil who has failed to attend church for a Sunday or two, eh?” [note 34.]

“Nay, I took in two on such complaints this morning, but to-night I shall hail in a blasphemer.”

“Hardly to-night,” thought Tabbard, and then he added aloud, “Doth not thy conscience prick thee at times for dragging such men to jail?”

“I am but an instrument of the law,” replied the constable in deep tones, at the same time striking his chest with his fingers evidently in imitation of the voice and action of the Lord High Sheriff. “The man who should have cold sweats is the accuser, the public informer.”

“Are there many of such curs?”

“Enough to keep us busy,” answered Gyves.

“And who has held thy nose to the hot scent?”

“Out cow-herd! I like not thy terms of address,” exclaimed Gyves, bringing his fist down with a ring upon the table, “A hot scent with a nose upon it raises the figure of a dog. It takes no keen wit to see that. And as thou hast called it my nose, then forsooth, I am the dog.”

“Nay, nay!” exclaimed Tabbard, “I meant no offense. Here, I clink glasses with thee as evidence of good-fellowship.”

They raised the glasses of wine which the drawer had set before them.

“Who was the accuser of the man you bear a warrant for?”

“Bame,” said the constable, lowering his voice. “He is one of the prime movers against Papists and scoffers of religion.”

“Of the established church, eh?”

“Nay, a sour, morose Brownist, who strikes at all but his own sect.”

“A gad fly,” said Tabbard.

“An asp, more like; a carrion-eating swine!” exclaimed Gyves, as though the words were the froth of bitter recollections.

“Is his rope long?”

“As long as the laws under which he acts.”

“And who is the accused in this case?”

“Chris--”

He checked himself and then continued:

“’Sdeath! When I get the reviler where liberty is a sweet memory only, I will if I choose call aloud his name in every quarter but St. Paul’s.”

“And why not there?”

“He hath attacked the church, ’tis said.”

“Canst thou not recollect his name, over this second glass?” inquired Tabbard, smoothly.

“I said nothing of my recollection being faulty.”

“Hast thou the warrant? If thou hast let me see it,” said Tabbard, with the air and tone of one in command. “Here, some more of that best Rheinish wine,” he thundered to the drawer.

Gyves had never encountered so reckless a spendthrift. His admiration was rising as every glass was lowered. He was in no hurry to go on his quest. The foggy night, and the dark miles between the Windmill and the Roman Wall caused him to embrace the glittering present. The tap-room of the Windmill never appeared so enchanting. Tabbard, despite his rusticity, was growing into a prince. The cultivated caution of the constable oozed away, and he placed the warrant in Tabbard’s hands. Just at that moment Bame walked into the tap-room and came hurriedly toward the table. Tabbard had caught sight of him out of the corner of his eye. He thrust the warrant in his pocket, at the same time giving a significant glance at Gyves, who, with at first a motion that he would retake the paper, subsided on noticing Bame. The latter said, as he reached the table, “How now, Gyves, has the arrest been made?”

“Shortly, sir, shortly,” exclaimed Gyves, scarcely able to conceal his surprise at seeing the sanctimonious-looking Brownist beside him in the tap-room.

“Good faith, man! Get thee out quick, or the fellow will be fled. Thou hast already squandered an hour here. Come, stir thyself!”

The tones were peremptory and husky with suppressed anger. Gyves knew Bame’s power. He felt that temporary action was necessary to preserve his office. True, he could not act without the warrant, and he dared not expose to Bame his folly by demanding its return. So, hoping that he could see Tabbard later, and, having procured the warrant, make the arrest, he arose.

“I am off at once--” he said.

“Odds end!” exclaimed Bame savagely, “Don’t stop to mouth words. Push along.”

“And where will you lodge?” asked the constable of Tabbard, who, rejoicing over the complete relief he had secured for his friend Kit, sat there apparently unconcerned.

“Here,” answered Tabbard.

Gyves turned and walked away from them. In going, Bame’s back was toward him, but he saw the smiling face of Tabbard, and striking his own breast, he made a motion with his hand as though to say, “The warrant you have in your pocket deliver to me a little later.”

Tabbard nodded his head understandingly, and the troubled arm of the law passed out of the old Jewry entrance.

Bame scrutinized the late companion of the constable for an interval without changing his position. Tabbard stared back at him with an expression of contempt and hatred, which changed to a smile of triumph as he thought with what exultation he could tear the warrant into shreds before Bame’s eyes. He itched to do it on the instant; but the other man wheeled round and sought a table in a retired corner, from where he continued his scrutiny of Tabbard. There was something about the latter man which jarred a chord in Bame’s memory, and suddenly he recognized him as the person who had been with Marlowe at the Dolphin. This recognition, connected with the fact of the lately interrupted meeting between Gyves and Tabbard, raised his suspicions, and his watching became like that of a hawk.

Tabbard took out the warrant. He opened it curiously and examined the seal. It was the only portion of the paper that assured him of the legal character of the writ. Words in Greek could have conveyed as much meaning as those printed and written on the paper. If he had been convicted of felony, Tabbard would have suffered the severe penalty; for the benefit of clergy would not have availed him. He could not read the Lord’s Prayer in English print.

He folded the paper and then began tearing it into small bits. These he scattered around him, feeling like a life convict taking the first breath of air outside the broken wall of the prison. As he ground the last pieces into the sand under his feet, he lifted his glass of Rheinish wine and threw his head back to drain the contents. The thought of “Sir Kit” was in his mind, a smile played upon his lips.

Could death strike us at the moment of accomplishing good for a friend or for the human race, we might not parley but pass with glorified faces into a peace assuredly in keeping with the joy kindled by the generous act. With few the end comes so gloriously. To the soldier, the martyr, the mother, such passing of the spirit is oft vouchsafed; the first, falling at the head of the victorious forces on the captured battlements; the second, amid flames at the stake; the last, with the first breath of her infant upon her lips already damp with the dew of dissolution.

In the position assumed by Tabbard for his last draught, the bright flame of a suspended lamp flared in his eyes. To him it appeared to swing in a circle, although in fact it was stationary; and the vaulted ceiling seemed rising in air higher and higher, until he looked into the darkness of absolute night. It was his head that swayed instead of the lamp; it was the gradual failure of his eye-sight that raised the phenomenon of the fading ceiling. A violent nausea seized him, so that every fiber of his body shook and his glass fell shivered upon the floor. He groaned so loudly that every one in the room turned his face in his direction. And thus, before staring and startled faces, the quivering man rolled from his chair to the sanded floor. A whisper rose from every lip, except from the pair which grew white in distress. The words were the same from all:

“The plague!”

The stricken man may have heard the two words, but it could have conveyed no new tidings to his mind. Even the shiver of his frame from a draught of cold air would have sprung the belief that the first symptom of the Black Death had appeared. But there was no mistaking the pang that shot through him, like an arrow from a long bow. Could he have seen his face a few moments afterward as Bame saw it, turned upward on the floor, he would have died more suddenly from fright; hæmorrhagic spots discolored it--the unmistakable symbol of internal dissolution. They looked like the black imprints of the fingers of a hand that had been thrust with violence against it.

“Tell him he is safe,” came the broken words from lips moved by a wandering mind.

“Who?” asked Bame, leaning over him.

The dying man did not answer, but the words “Deptford” and the “Earl’s actors” were uttered in his rambling speech.

THE MOLDING OF THE MASK.

_Jove sometimes masked in a shepherd’s weed,_
_And by those steps, that he hath scaled the heavens,_
_May we become immortal like the gods._

--_I Tamburlaine, i, 2._

_Conceal me what I am, and be my aid_
_For such disguise as haply may become_
_The form of my intent._

--_Twelfth Night, i, 2._

The silence in Peele’s chamber at the Boar’s Head had continued many minutes. The three hearers of Marlowe’s vivid recital looked at each other expectantly; but as all had quaffed his cup of misery, silence was alone the fit expression of their depth of feeling and interest. The intense personality of the man had aroused in them sentiments like those he entertained. They recognized his genius [note 18 to 24], the height from which he had fallen, the deplorableness of his situation. It was as though his intellect had unseated theirs and mounted on the thrones thus vacated. Thus the boon companion of their riotous follies, the good fellow, the well-beloved and revel-loving Kit, had in a thrice vanished in thin air, and a veritable king of men assumed his place.

He had simply summoned the power that he knew was lodged within him, deep in the inexhaustible fountain from which he had drawn his lines of fire and figures of immortal mold.

“Let us calmly consider your situation,” at length said Tamworth, looking feelingly at Marlowe, “Against thyself lieth now an accusation of blasphemy upon which a warrant hath been issued. Even now, undoubtedly, with this in hand, the officers shadow thy customary haunts. During their search, news will soon come of thy death at Deptford; for, from what thou sayeth of the unfortunate Frazer’s resemblance to thee, he will be buried under thy name. The warrant will be returned; the information pigeonholed, and thou wilt have little to fear from that source.”

“Unless he goes abroad among those who know him,” ejaculated Peele.

“That can not be,” whispered Marlowe.

“Then we will take it, that, as Marlowe, thou art like one dead beyond all resurrection,” continued the lawyer with emphasis.

“It can not be otherwise,” rejoined the subject of these comments, “unless in some retreat of assured safety, and at some future time, I reveal myself.”

“As the slayer of the Count?” was asked.

“There’s the rub,” whispered Marlowe, shaking his head.

“Well that is for later consideration,” said Tamworth calmly. “Let me continue. On the morrow a hue and cry will be raised for the arrest of Francis Frazer. The character which you have assumed for the last few hours cannot avail thee further. It has answered its purpose. Thou hast kept thy name from being sullied with the crime of murder. But as the Count, or Francis Frazer, thou canst not walk forth.”

“Assuredly not,” said Peele.

“An arrest before noon would follow,” interrupted Shakespere, “and then, thy trial, in which, perchance, the true situation of affairs would come to light.”

“Wherein lieth safety?” asked Marlowe, raising his eyes and glancing from one face to the other of his friends.

“A life of obscurity,” answered Tamworth, “is all I can see for thee, unless thine efforts at concealment are undone; you deliver yourself up and stand trial. I cannot guarantee an acquittal, but it is not going too far to place firm hope in one.”

“No,” exclaimed Marlowe, “rather the concealment and obscurity than such course. The die has been cast; so far it worketh well, and even with an acquittal, this untried charge of blasphemy would stick in the burr. What is it? How far doth it reach? Hast thou a copy of the accusation?”

“I have,” said Peele, again producing the paper and handing it to Marlowe.

“The severity and falsity of the charges appall me,” exclaimed Marlowe, “nothing could be blacker. Are there no means to vindicate my name?”

“Your memory,” suggested Shakespere.

“True, that is all the world hath of me, but in all seriousness can not this false swearer, Bame, be punished?”

“He can, if you desire it,” answered Tamworth.

“Desire it? What man would not demand it?”

“I know of none.”

“Much of it is too vile for utterance, and that I knew one Poole in Newgate, and intended coining English shillings is as false as Hell. When shall his prosecution be pushed?”

“At once,” answered Tamworth.

“On what charge?”

“Perjury.”

“The penalty is what?”

“He can be tried either under the statute or the common law. Under the latter, the punishment is death.”

“Let it be the latter,” said Peele and Shakespere before Marlowe could answer.

“But to return to the suggestion of your concealment,” said Peele, “How can you remain concealed for any length of time?”

“No one will look for me. All who know me will hear the account of my death at Deptford.”

“But someone besides us and the wife of Frazer will doubtless encounter thee.”

“Can I not lie safely housed until passage can be secured for the continent?”

“But in what quarter?”

“Far from the old familiar places, Peele,” answered Marlowe. “Not at the Black Bull, nor at Gerard’s Hall; nor at the Mermaid Tavern. And are these names to be but memories? Why, it is not two weeks since we secretly played Tancred and Gismund to the crowded galleries in the Bull; and then the dance around the fir-pole in the high-roofed hall at Gerard’s! That was not a month since, Peele. And verily my lips have not yet dried from the last glasses of fine old wine drank with thee, Nash, Jonson and the other merry wags at the round table within the bow-window at the Mermaid.”

Peele rocked backward and forward without speaking.

“Ah well, such frivolity should have ended long ago,” Marlowe went on, in a tone growing sterner with every word. “When mine enemy, Greene, dying of his surfeit of Rheinish wine and pickled herring, besought his friends in his Groat’s Worth of Wit [note 35] to abandon dissolute companions and in solitude nourish their spirit’s fire, why should I, despite his attack upon me, have not listened to his warning voice addressed to others, and not have waited for a finger dipped in blood to write, ‘Here endeth thy career?’”

A pause followed in which no one spoke, and again he continued: “’Tis well that this has happened. Without it what could have stayed me from wasting the hours which henceforth can be spent only in intellectual effort? Now the devil is chained. I can not even sell my soul to him. The world with its temptations lieth as distant as the fields of Trasymene. Is it not a subject for congratulation? What campaigns may I not enter; what conquests may I not gain?”

With the egotism of a god, knowing himself, and the source from which he drew his inspiration, he continued his torrent of words:

“Tamburlaine was written with the collar of the university about my neck; Faustus, while my hatred of the existing laws designed to chain one’s belief, prevented a just appreciation of true religion; the Massacre of Paris, with my mind disturbed from the effects of continuous dissipation; Hero and Leander, while deep in Love’s young dream; and so on with the list. But now what is there to clog or muddy the fountains? Is my mind not broader; are not the impediments to studious application and undisturbed contemplation removed? For twenty, thirty, yea forty or fifty years, what is before me but the opportunity to produce immortal and transcendent work? Nay, give me ten years in solitude, O thou dread force, and under my hand all form, all thought, shall find expression in written words!”

He fell forward on the table with outstretched arms and clenched hands. Shakespere lifted him up; pityingly brushed back the hair from his face, and said: “Forget the matter for a moment.”

No other words were spoken; still the rain pattered on the window opening towards St. Michael’s, and no sounds came up from the narrow walks in Crooked Lane.

At length Tamworth broke the silence. “I do not doubt, dear Kit, that whatever may be thy aim, thy arrow will reach. But life can not be maintained without capital or revenue. Your design being linked with an ambition for personal immortality precludes the publication of thy productions till after thy death or when hope of life is gone. Now, where will come the fund for thy maintenance?”

“Thou canst not appear as an actor,” suggested Shakespere.

“And neither can the works you may produce be sold as thine,” said Peele.

“Could they not be sold under some one else’s name?” asked Marlowe. “At the proper time their authorship could be confessed and established.”

“But in whose name?” queried Peele.

“Why not thine; at least temporarily?”

“Bah,” ejaculated Peele, “I could not pass thy dramas off as mine. The style, my dear fellow, the style. Henslowe would at once say, ‘What Peele, this thy drama? Marry, and where didst thou steal this new fire? Off with thee. It is none of thine. Leave it. I will look up the older dramatists, Greek and Latin, from which I ween thou hast taken its entire,’”

“Then why not as thine, Shakespere?”

“Mine,” exclaimed Shakespere, shaking with laughter which he could not control, “Greater objections than those stated by Peele would arise. Only a few years ago I held horses before the Curtain and Theater. I write a play; Ho! Ho!”

He laughed so heartily that Tamworth joined with him.

“Stop,” said Peele, endeavoring to interrupt the sudden mirth, “The suggestion is a good one. What does Henslowe know of your horseholding, friend Will?”

“But,” answered Shakespere, “he knoweth that I came from the miserable village of Stratford-on-Avon only six years ago, where there are few books and nothing better than a grammar school. [note 36] Although I can say ‘Stipendium peccati mors est,’ as being learned from thy Faustus, Marlowe, I would die in the attempt to give its meaning.”

“He surely will not question thee about thy Latin or thy Greek,” said Tamworth, joining in with the scheme, “and as thou hast never turned a hand at such work, there are not, as in Peele’s case, fair-skinned children of earlier birth to give the lie to the paternity of the later ones of different complexion.”

“And am I to claim them as mine?” asked Shakespere.

“Only as may be necessary for the sale to theatrical managers,” answered Marlowe.

“And perchance grow famous; for we know the depth and strength of thy work.”

“Only for a time,” said Marlowe, impressively, “In the end all will be clear.”

“So be it then,” said Shakespere.

“But thy handwriting, Marlowe, is too well known. Still,” continued Tamworth, “the manuscript may be copied, and as I write a clear hand I would gladly aid thee.”

“But where are you to live, Kit?”

“At Southwark?” questioned the latter.

“Nay,” exclaimed Tamworth, “the Rose is there, with many players who know thee, and its numerous hangers-on. The heart of this city is far better. I know of a retreat. No hunted deer ever found so secure a covert. It is the building known as the Prince’s Wardrobe on the Old Jewry. Its corridors are unfrequented except by the few tenants who, through the benevolence of the present keeper, dwell in some of the chambers. Its demolition, begun many years ago, has been stayed. Once vacated because of notice of its contemplated razing, it is again being occupied through the apparent inertness of its owners. But this inaction is due to other causes--”

“I have heard of secret chambers there,” interrupted Peele.

“There are,” continued Tamworth, “It was once used as a palace, but its early history is lost. Some of its stone walls are down, and above the cleared ruins at one end, divers lordly buildings have been reared; but the half portion towards St. Olave is intact. A question concerning its title being now unsettled in the courts, no progress can be made either in its repair or its destruction. Years may pass before the question is finally determined. The receiver appointed by the courts is a descendant of Sir Anthony Cope, who purchased the property from the crown in 1548, and, due to my acquaintance with him, and late services rendered, I now have a furnished chamber therein. The way out, or in, may be easy of discovery, and my quarters are occasionally visited by friends, but to me alone is known an inner room where you can dwell in perfect safety.”

“Thy words are of good cheer,” exclaimed Marlowe, “and no delay must be incurred.”

“Did you encounter no one upon entering here?” asked Peele.

“No; I came in at the side entrance. It was open. Crooked Lane was deserted as far as I could see.”

“And on the road from Deptford?”

“No one who knew me appeared upon the road. At the Golden Hind as I passed the tap-room door I caught a glimpse of the drawer, one of the actors who had been with me early in the evening, and the wife of Frazer.”

“Ah; she has not escaped then?” exclaimed Tamworth. “This is serious. She may be held until after the discovery of the deed.”

“Undoubtedly she has been,” answered Marlowe, “I could not catch the occasion of her resting in the tap-room, neither could I pause, for discovery would have been certain.”

“Did she see thee?”

“I think not, for the drawer stood before her, so that only a portion of her gown was visible to me. I mounted hurriedly in the inn-yard and riding to the gnarled oak I waited under it, and in the thick fog for at least an hour. She did not come.”

“She will testify against thee.”

“Never,” exclaimed Marlowe.

“Ah,” said Tamworth, prolonging the word and opening wide his eyes.

“Have no fears of that,” continued Marlowe, firmly, and then as though to turn their thoughts into another channel, he continued: “The ride over that country road was lonely beyond all comparison. I slunk by the lights at Redriffe like one unarmed passing by the known lair of a sleeping lion. At the moment they struck my face I could have fallen from the saddle. But no eye of careless watcher was apparently following their seams into the darkness; for no haloo broke the night. The wood of oak and elm fencing the road this side the half-way house was resonant with swaying limbs. A wind was coming from the river, and the fog was like rain.”

“Was it dark?”

“So dark I could not see the ground.”

“Thy horse found the way and reached the bridge?”

“No, I turned not in towards it; but passing Bataille’s Inn, I rode down to a waterman’s house close by the river’s bank. There I dismounted, tied my horse and found the waterman. He was tying his wherry at the foot of the landing. With much persuasion, I induced him to row me across and, reaching the stone steps somewhere near the Swan, I came here with all haste.”

“And when were you last at your quarters in Coward Lane?”

“Just before starting for Deptford.”

“Whatever is there must be left.”

“Nay,” exclaimed Marlowe, “I have much unfinished work there.”

“Doth not Nash lodge in the same tenement?”

“Yes, in the room adjoining.”

“Doth he know of these writings?”

“All about them. He is engaged with me in writing the tragedy of Dido. I read him the two sestiads of Hero and Leander only two nights since.”

“Well then such things can not be taken unless Nash is numbered with us.”

“’Twould not be well,” said Tamworth, “the lesser the number holding the secret, the less fear of discovery.”

“Thy judgment is sound, Tamworth,” said Marlowe, “let Nash finish the tragedy, and have him place the poem of Hero and Leander in the hands of Chapman with word that it was my dying request that he complete it [note 37].”

“Good,” exclaimed Peele, “and perchance embodying within it some golden lines touching thy unfortunate demise.”

“Most excellent,” said Marlowe, smiling at the thought of reading of his own death and the estimate of his own worth expressed in the poetic language of a loving friend.

“These matters,” said Tamworth, “will be attended to as strictly as bequests should be by an executor. We must at once reach my lodgings.”

“Leave the Count’s cloak and take this of mine,” said Peele, taking down a short mantle from a hook against the wall.

A POINT OF CONFLUENCE.

_If ever sun stained heaven with bloody clouds,_
_And made it look with terror on the world:_
_If ever day were turned to ugly night_
_And night made semblance of the hue of hell, etc._

--_The Massacre at Paris, scene 2._

_Oh! I have passed a miserable night,_
_So full of ugly sights, of ghastly dreams,_
_That as I am a Christian, faithful man,_
_I would not spend another such a night,_
_Though ’twere to buy a world of happy days._

--_King Richard III, i, 4._

The human sea of London was at the period of its deepest calm. The noisy idle white-caps of the night had been laid at rest, and not yet had the strong billows of the trade current begun their steady roll. The sun might already have lifted his rim slightly above the Langdon Hills, but no evidence of his coming was as yet visible in the labyrinth of London streets. One might have turned one’s face upward in the drizzling rain and noticed the clouds with faint glow suffused, but whether it was moonlight filtering through broken ranks of driving vapor, or the gray of the dawn, could not for a time have been determined.

It was at this hour that two men were passing into that ancient street of the city known as the Old Jewry. Their heads were muffled in their cloaks or capes; their nearer arms locked as they walked abreast, and their steps were as swift as it was possible to take in the darkness. They stumbled along without a link light or a lanthorn to show the holes in the broken pavements, the turns of streets and other impediments and intricacies of the way. It was not only unusual but a matter to excite suspicion, for any person with even the weight of an untattered coat on his back to venture thus through the quarters from which these two men had come. Here and there, a lanthorn in the hands of a bellman of the night blinked and wavered; and directly before them, the flaring torch of a link-boy shot a shifting light along black, dripping shop fronts and displayed the figure, close following in its wake, of a solitary horseman.

No part of the city was deemed safe after the candles, burning in the horn receptacles before the dwellings and shops, were extinguished. The hour for such extinguishment was nine; and close following it, on moonless and foggy nights, bludgeon-bearing thieves issued from reeking alleys into the public streets, and assaulted belated passers. The bellman, with his formidable halberd, might rush where he heard the cry of the person assaulted, but long before he reached the spot his lanthorn had warned the assaulter, and naught but the bleeding victim, with rifled pockets, would meet his gaze.

But the solitary thief, or skulking pairs of rufflers, were not the only menace against night walks. Bodies, numbering sometimes a hundred men, having assembled in some obscure den, would sally forth at midnight and rob the houses of whomsoever were reported to have money or treasure. Murder at such times, either of defenseless citizens in night robes within their houses, or inoffensive unfortunates stumbling into the ranks of the lawless crews, was a crime of frequent occurrence.

The neighborhood of the junction of Poultry street and the street of the Old Jewry was a favorite rendezvous of these thieves; for the majority of the persons stirring late at night in that locality was of the class wearing jewels or carrying coin, and the situation was favorable for robbing without hazard. At the corner of the two streets one could command a vision for many blocks in several directions. The moving lights of the guardians of the night could thus be watched without fear of the unexpected approach of the latter. While one thief might be thus occupied, his fellows could halt, assault and rob the incautious passer. The lofty buildings rendered the shadows deep upon the pavements on all nights, and the wide portico of St. Olave, with its great columns, made an excellent ambush. Behind this church ran Cutthroat Lane--a narrow and never-lighted alley, into which one, with but a few feet of separation from a pursuing officer, could enter and vanish as though swallowed by the sea. It was a row of shackly tenements, facing one side of this alley, that thus gave friendly aid. Their doors were always ajar, even when winter storms prevailed; and stairs, ascending to intricate upper halls, and descending into connecting cellars, soon baffled all panting pursuers. Even the cautious police who, in daytime, attempted to thread the ways through which some desperado had eluded pursuit, were confused with blind passages and daunted by a darkness and silence that imported evil.

On this particular night, five thieves were hanging like trembling shadows about the portico of St. Olave. The night was almost spent and not one groat had they raised. All the passing groups of men had comprised too many members to warrant any attack and the one sole traveler, whom they had seized at the mouth of Cutthroat Lane proved to be a beggar. His unconscious body now lay face downward in the mud of that lane. The chance of his recovery from the blow of one of the disappointed robbers was a question for the doctors.

What business had beggars to be abroad at the hour when gentlemen were returning from nightly revels? Who could distinguish a ragged cloak from one edged with gold in such darkness? Gentlemen thieves were not to be lightly imposed upon. A varlet who has no angels in his pockets should be abed at dark. For such the sleep that knows no waking is a blessing. This was the argument of the men who had halted the beggar.

As the two men, whose steps we have been following, entered the Old Jewry, their approach was a matter of notice, and as they reached a spot directly before the church, three of the thieves sprang out of the shadows of its projecting entrance. The attack came so unexpectedly that the two men had no chance for flight, and safety seemed to lie only in such effort. In the first grapple, the taller man’s cloak was torn from him, but this was of fortunate occurrence, for it enabled him to draw his sword. His companion had been felled to his knees, but, avoiding another blow aimed at his head, he rose to his feet and staggered to one side. The drawn sword of his friend swung through the air. It cut a face wide open in its career, and was again wielded in like manner, but without effect. Then the wounded robber seized the knees of the swordsman, only to be thrust through and through, as the latter stumbled and fell in the embrace.

In the meantime, the other man assailed, tugging at the hilt of his own sword which was kept from handy withdrawal by the folds of his cloak, retreated backward into the middle of the street. Approaching him was the robber who had delivered the first ineffectual blow. In the tussle he had dropped his bludgeon, and he was now trusting to his own strength to overpower this man before him. Suddenly another sword was out of its scabbard. There was a quick thrust at the dark body between outstretched hands which had almost grasped the swordsman’s neck. A groan escaped from agonized lips, and the wielder of the sword felt warm blood upon his sword hand. His victim had fallen heavily against him, but he pushed him off like so much dead weight, and at that moment he heard his friend’s voice:

“Run, Kit, for thy life!”

“I am with you,” came the answer.

He saw that two other shadows had joined the decimated group. These two had been drowsing on the portico, and at length, aroused by the cries, had come forth. He saw his companion turn and run, and he followed him.

The lights of the windmill tavern streamed across the way, for its doors were open. They reached the fronting pillars of its portico, as though a haven, and then paused. Both of them knew that they could not venture in, and fortunately their assailants had given up the chase.

In the gloom, behind one of the columns, they stood panting. Near them stood a man also in the shadows. Their swift approach had been observed by him; but if he had apprehended the cause, it had not shaken him from his intent to remain concealed. He might have heard the retreating footsteps of their now baffled pursuers, and this should have disturbed him; for the cause of the men who had almost brushed against him was his cause. It was his duty to pursue the assailants; but there are times when the public weal is forgotten--blotted out by thoughts of one’s private welfare. And so it was with the man in the darkness of the portico. The continuance of his ability to act for the public, nay, possibly his existence, depended on different service than the arrest of midnight marauders.

This man was Gyves, the constable, and he was waiting to see Bame leave the tavern so that he might venture in, find Tabbard, and obtain by persuasion or violence the warrant for the arrest of Marlowe. He had waited there for hours, through the mist which had drifted across the portico, and then later, while the drizzling rain had beaten in his face and set him shivering. He had yet no knowledge of the destruction of the writ, and no whisper of the sudden visit of the plague had touched his ears. So it was that the paper, upon which he dreamed his welfare hung, and the man whom he had for the past eight hours yearned most to see, were both beyond power of production to him. But despite all this, the arrest of Marlowe, which was his ultimate object, required at that moment neither the departure of Bame nor his possession of the writ. And furthermore no long weary walk nor tiresome search in an unfamiliar quarter would have been necessary. He could have reached out his hand and have arrested the two men under the neighboring column for a disturbance of the peace. Even then a sword was being sheathed by one of them, and Gyves had heard the late outcry which of itself was sufficient to have justified him in taking them into custody to await further investigation. One of the men was Christopher Marlowe.

To us, with our limited vision, what a comedy is life. Over what scenes of merriment could we not amuse ourselves were we robbed of hearts and consciences and there were added to our remaining faculties the power of unlimited sight alone; to see the struggles of one during a whole life for a result which required only a few days’ effort along another line than that pursued; to see the entanglement, in a single web, of many with worthy designs, and their struggles liberating only that one who as it appeared to us should have remained entangled; to see the life pursuit for a will-o’-the-wisp; to see genius strangled, and dullness triumphant. Perhaps the truth would then burst upon us, that we are but the pawns and knights of the chess-board, moved by an Omniscient hand toward the final victory of the whole.

As the three men held back in the shadows, three more men came forth from the portals of the tavern; but only two of them walked. The third was between the others, but instead of being like them, erect, he was in a horizontal position. He lay upon a stretcher which the two men bore. He was motionless, and a rough cloth covered his form.

Certain it was that the covering of the man upon the stretcher should have concealed his face, but through some inadvertency it had rolled down upon his breast so that his face was revealed. It was expressionless and that of one from whom the soul had fled. A man with flaming torch now ran out of the doors, as though to lead the way, and as the light struck upon the form upon the stretcher, one of the two men who had escaped the murderous, bludgeons of the thieves, clutched his companion’s arm and gasped:

“My God! the dead man is Tabbard.”

Then, as the flaming torch illuminated the man in front, who, with back toward the corpse, bore the stretcher, Marlowe, for he was the speaker, sunk his fingers deep into the clutched arm, for at that moment he heard a voice near him whisper:

“And Bame, Richard Bame, carries him.”

A shadow, shifting with the wavering of the torch, fell across Marlowe’s face. The latter looked to ascertain its cause and also the source of the last words spoken, and saw the outline of a man in the coat of an officer slink from the portico into the rain and the darkness. The torch now revealed an object close to the edge of the pavement. It was a heavy cart with horses attached like the one which had passed Tabbard early that night. His body was being borne toward it.

IN THE PRINCE’S WARDROBE.

_But stay, what star shines yonder in the East?_

--_Jew of Malta, ii, 1._

_But soft: what light through yonder window breaks?_
_It is the East--_

--_Romeo and Juliet, ii, 2._

Marlowe and Tamworth now followed the example of the constable and, having moved silently along the street, in a few moments were in the wide and dark hall of a large building near the church of St. Olave.

“Hold to my arm,” said Tamworth, “This is the Prince’s Wardrobe.”

“And entered without turning so much as a knob or lifting a latch,” responded Marlowe.

“Here we climb the King’s staircase,” said Tamworth, as one of his advancing feet struck against an obstacle.

The morn was breaking, but the interior of the building, although open and windswept, was wrapped in utter darkness. Nought could be distinguished of the broken columns down the long hall, the tesselated pavement under foot, the marred frescoes of the walls, the blackened stucco of the ceilings, the solid staircase with heavy stone balustrade ascending to a middle landing. Once the principal palace of King Henry VI, it had long since been remodeled and adapted to plebeian uses. It has even survived its fitness for the latter shifts, and partially dismantled by man and ruined by time it stood simply as a landmark of the fourteenth century.

The few words of the lawyer set moving through the poet’s mind a vision of splendid pageantry. The great hall rose out of shadow, bright with the illumination of a thousand lamps, and across its shining floor and up and down the marble stairway moved figures resplendent in the pomp of royalty--men of magnificent mien in cloaks of cloth of gold and waving plumes; court sycophants with cringing shoulders under their rich mantles; clowns in cap and bells and spangles; fair ladies in regal robes, their faces beautiful in youth, or growing queenly with the marks of age. All were raised as at a masque under the signal of the Master of the Revels.

And this interior scene, from which kings, courtiers and the fairest and most womanly of women were to be drawn for all time, was not his only vision of the tumultuous past. Outside, again, Jack Cade, with his rebels, Kentish peasants, ragged mendicants and starvelings of the alleys, swept defiantly through the Old Jewry and halted with deafening uproar before the barricaded entrance. There at their head, he saw the “shag-haired crafty kerne” and, close pressing him, the leather-aproned smiths and hedge-born hinds, awkward soldiers of the day’s enlistment, from whose base lips all the drolleries of the seamy side of life were to issue.

And he, the magic creator of forms more palpable and enduring than those of clay, groping in the darkness which might never be lifted, was thus beginning the conjuration of the everlasting.

“Marlowe,” exclaimed Tamworth, noticing the lack of pressure on his arm, and his friend’s faltering footsteps. “You drag your feet as though in sleep. See, the clouds are breaking and the gray of the dawn is about us.”

They were passing along an upper corridor, and at its end, through the glassless spaces between the mullions of a lancet window, a glow was spreading so that the rear gables of the row of houses on the Lothbury could be seen shaking themselves free of the murky air. Above their steaming roofs, slender columns of smoke were rising from the cold mouths of chimneys, and early fires made gleaming spots on many of the distant walls. The last wet gust of the storm had splashed upon the open casement through which now came, like a benison, the pure breath of morning.

Down the corridor they turned, and, at length halted, while Tamworth with a great key which he had taken from a sunken niche in the wall, unlocked and swung open a narrow door. Through this they entered an apartment whose single window did not yet admit enough light to render distinctly visible the interior. The air was cold and damp, and for the moment the place seemed as gloomy as a vault. Tamworth hastily lighted a lamp, which at first flamed upward with black smoke, and as it did so Marlowe glancing around him, uttered an exclamation of surprise.

“You notice that something more than a mere vestige of past regal splendor remains here,” said Tamworth, smiling.

“Why, I should judge that the door had just closed upon the departure of the prince.”

“A hundred years ago,” answered Tamworth.

“And--” began his companion.

“Has remained vacant until I entered as its occupant.”

“Why this long disuse?”

“It is in a retired wing of the building. Only two keepers have had charge since the Crown parted with its title. The first, from what may have been an over-refined reverence for royalty, held this apartment locked and almost secret. His successor found no use for it until I solicited lodgment. He gave me possession five years since.”

“It is a wonder that the tapestries have not been removed,” said Marlowe, looking in admiration at one end of the room where hung two magnificent fabrics, still displaying in enduring colors scenes from the Apocalypse. They were drawn back from the middle line of the alcove before which they hung; and, in the recess thus disclosed, the outlines of a bed, with gorgeous canopy overhanging it, could be seen. Other textiles of equally antique manufacture, at many points detached from the fastenings, hung here and there against the walls. Separate pieces of Oriental carpet lay over some spaces of the floor. The furniture was dark as ebony. A lamp of brass, with four projecting wings and blackened chains, suspended from the center of the ceiling. The deep and wide chimney-place was fit for a fire great enough to warm the banqueting hall of a castle. Its mantel was supported by elaborately carved columns standing half out from the front of the chimney-wall.

“And where does that stairway lead?” asked Marlowe, pointing at a dark opening in the floor beside one wall. It was guarded by a brass railing raised waist-high on a closely set balustrade, and at its foot could be seen a solid door held shut by an iron bar across its face.

“To an underground passageway.”

“For escape?”

“Evidently.”

“And ends where?”

“Under a marble slab which must be somewhere in the chancel of the church of St. Olave. I have passed along it measuring the distance.”

“But never issued at the other end?”

“No. The slab is closely set in its place, but it hath hinges on its lower side.”

“And on its upper side, I doubt not,” said Marlowe ironically, “are the words in fair letters ‘Touch not mine annointed’?”

“Possibly,” rejoined Tamworth.

“If the king ever rose from the grave,” said Marlowe, smiling, “I imagine that he took great pains to conceal it.”

“There is no tradition that this room was ever occupied by a king or a prince; but what I know of the life and character of the weak and unfortunate monarch, Henry the Sixth, taken in connection with the arrangement of this room and its adjoining secret chamber, convinces me that a crowned head once rested on the bed within the alcove.”

“Ah, the secret room is an oratory, is it?”

“You surprise me,” exclaimed Tamworth, “how could that have reached your ears?”

“I simply inferred it, for I certainly do not think that the secret tunnel into the chancel was for the purpose of easy attendance upon divine service.”

Tamworth smiled, and Marlowe continued speaking:

“I knew of the imbecility of that prince and the strength of his religious devotion; and naturally in my mind was raised the picture of a world-weary king in penitential cell.”

“You are right,” returned the lawyer. “See.”

He parted the heavy and worm-eaten hangings suspended from the ornamental cornice of the wall beside the painted window. The outline of what appeared to be a walled window appeared. Its sill, like that of the one that was open and uncovered, was only a foot above the floor. He pressed on one of the mullions, which, although apparently blocked with stone on both sides, remained standing out from the surface of the wall. This surface rolled inward as he pressed. The opening was wide enough to admit the passing of a man in stooping posture.

“Come,” said Tamworth.

He stepped upon the stone sill, and as Marlowe, holding back the musty tapestry for a moment, pressed close in his wake, he entered a small room.