ANNE FEVERSHAM

  BY
  J. C. SNAITH

  D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
  NEW YORK AND LONDON
  1914




  COPYRIGHT, 1914, BY
  D. APPLETON AND COMPANY

  Published in England as “The Great Age”


  Printed in the United States of America




ANNE FEVERSHAM




CHAPTER I


A DISTINGUISHED member of the Lord Chamberlain’s company, Mr.
William Shakespeare by name, had entered the shop of a tailor in the
town of Nottingham. This popular and respected actor and playwright was
about thirty-five years of age. Of middle height, he had the compact
figure of one in the prime of a vigorous manhood. His hair was worn
rather long, but his beard, inclining to red in color, was trim and
close. His dress was plainer than is the rule with those who follow his
calling. Indeed at a first glance he had less of the look of an actor
than of a shrewd, cautious man of affairs who has prospered in trade.
Close observation might have amended this estimate. There was a vivid
pallor about the face, and the somber eyes, slow-burning and deep-set,
were like a smoldering fire. Even when the mobile features were in
repose, which was seldom the case, the whole effect of the countenance
was vital and arresting.

“That is a very choice coffin-cloth you have there, Master Tidey.”

The manner of the actor and playwright was simplicity itself. There was
not a suspicion of affectation in it. He passed his fingers over the
rich pall that lay on the tailor’s knee. Upon the hem of the cloth an
armorial device was being stitched by the hand of a master craftsman.

“Yes, it is Master Shakespeare,” said the tailor gravely. “Choice
enough, choice enough.”

“Who is the happy man?”

“A young gentleman who lies in the Castle yonder. He is to have his
head cut off a Tuesday by order of the Queen.”

A look of startled interest came into the eyes of the player. “Is that
so, Master Tidey? And young, you say, and gentle, too?”

“Aye, young enough. But two or three and twenty--by all accounts a very
fair and deliver young man.”

“It seems a pity,” said the player, “a mortal pity, for a man to die
by the ax in the heat of his youth. And yet ’tis better to die by the
ax than by the string. It is at least a gentleman’s death the Queen is
giving him,” he added grimly.

“As you say,” the tailor agreed, “it is at least a gentleman’s death
the Queen is giving him, and he’ll have the robe of a gentleman in
which to wrap his corpse. Happen, Master Shakespeare, that in like case
it is a better consideration than would fall to you and me.”

A light flashed in the somber eyes of the player. “Speak for yourself
Master Tidey,” he said, with a slow, deep laugh. “Whenever I get my
deliverance, by God’s grace I’ll have the robe of a gentleman to cover
me. Unless”--the light in the somber eyes was so intense that they
shone almost black--“unless they let the reason out, and then there’s
no warrant for any man’s exit. But what of this poor young man? How
comes he to this?”

The tailor lowered his voice to a whisper. It was as if he feared to
be overheard. “They do say ’a has plotted with the Papishers, who are
always contriving against the Queen.”

“What’s the name of the unlucky youth?”

“His name is Mr. Gervase Heriot.”

“Mr. Gervase Heriot! He is a kinsman of my Lord Southampton.” A look
of keen pity came upon the player’s face. “I know the lad well enough.
He sat on our stage at The Globe less than two months ago. An open,
cheerful youth incapable of plotting against aught save a flask of
canaries, if I’m any judge of nature. Poor young man. Master Tidey,
this is a very tragic matter.”

“Sad enough, Master Shakespeare, sad enough,” said the tailor,
stitching busily at the coffin-cloth.

The actor passed a delicately shaped hand, the hand of a poet, across
his face. “More than once I have marked the lad as he sat in the
playhouse,” he said. “’A was a proper neat youth. ’A had a subtle
tongue and a very flaming eye. ’A was german-cousin to Perseus, him
that bestrid the winged horse. And now--with the taste of milk yet on
his lips!” The player ceased abruptly, as if overcome by a surge of
feeling. For a time he was silent. The tragic end of a youth of bright
promise appeared to weigh upon him sorely.

Master Nicholas Tidey, whose skill with the needle and shears had
spread far and wide over the midland counties, was, like the player,
a Stratford man. In a rather shamefaced way, the tailor was a little
inclined to be proud of his fellow-townsman. To be sure his calling
was hardly that of a Christian. On occasion his speech was apt to be
a little disorderly, it even verged upon the fantastical, but Master
Tidey was bound to admit that there must be something in the fellow.
For one thing, rumor had it that he had recently bought New Place,
the largest house in his native town. Such a fact spoke for itself,
even if a wise man was inclined to discount the glowing reports of the
play-actor’s ever-growing success which reached him continually from
London. But, even as far back in the world’s history as the age of
Elizabeth, “Nothing succeeds like success” was a maxim known to the
philosophers.

“They do tell me, Master Shakespeare,” said the tailor, “that some of
these harlotry pieces of yours have been approved by the Queen.”

The playwright could not help smiling a little at a certain uneasiness
which was apparent in the tone of his friend, in spite of the fact that
that honest man tried very hard to conceal it. “If I said they had not,
Master Tidey,” he answered, with dry modesty, “I might be speaking less
than I know. On the other hand, if I said that they had, a needy writer
for the stage might be claiming more than becomes the least of her
Majesty’s servants.”

Master Tidey looked a little incredulous. “They do tell me, Master
Shakespeare, that you make them out of your own head entirely. Master
Burbage, who was here an hour ago to have new points set in his
hose, swore it was so, by the beard of the prophet--facetiously, as
I think. But I can hardly believe it, Master Shakespeare, not out of
your own head, and that’s the fact. Why, I mind the time you was a
little graceless runnion that used to play truant from Stratford Free
School. Many’s the time I’ve seen you come sliding down Short Hill of
a winter’s morning in your blue short coat, with your books falling
out o’ your satchel as you dangled it behind you, and generally twenty
minutes late for the muster. You were always a sharp lad, Master
Shakespeare, I’m bound to say that although somewhat idly given, but I
never thought you’d have had wit enough to make one of these interludes
all out of your own head like book-learned men who have been bred at
college.”

“It seems unlikely enough I grant you,” said the player discreetly.
“And my pieces, such as they are, don’t compare of course with those
of some I could mention--there is a young fellow by the name of Ben
Jonson, and one of these days you’ll be able to contrive a whole
garment for the best of us out of his sleeve ruffles. But I sometimes
think, Master Tidey, when of an evening I’ve had a glass o’ clear
spring water with a carroway-seed in it at the Mermaid Tavern, that
if only he had had the singular good fortune to have been bred at
Oxford or Cambridge, the world might one day have heard of William
Shakespeare--but no matter! It will all be the same a hundred years
hence.” The player laughed cheerfully. “We shall all be forgotten, and
our interludes too, long before then.”

“Yes, Master Shakespeare, there can be no doubt about that,” said the
tailor heartily. “And personally I thank God for it. I don’t hold with
these masks and gallimaufries and such-like cloaks for wantonness,
saving your presence. Still the Queen does, as I understand, and
although I am much surprised at _her_, that’s a great matter. And that
being the case I am bound to admit that for one who left the Stratford
Free School at the age of thirteen with no more book-knowledge in his
numskull than Daddy Jenkins could put there with his ferrule, and if,
as I say, the Queen approves your interludes, and they are entirely out
of your own head, as Master Burbage swears they are by the beard of the
prophet--why, I am bound to admit that you bring little or no discredit
upon your native parish.”

“You pay me a high compliment, Master Tidey,” said the actor. “And
fain would I deserve it. But you will grieve to learn, I am sure,
that the Queen has commanded the Lord Chamberlain’s servants to her
palace at Richmond on the tenth of July, and moreover she desires a
new piece from the pen of the least of them all. It would seem that,
for some reason at present obscure, her Grace in her bounty is pleased
to approve the nonsensical comedy of “Love’s Labour’s Lost,” which,
between ourselves, is by no means the brightest of the performances
from the hand of the rustical clown in question.”

In spite of the strictness of his tenets, Master Tidey could not
forbear to be impressed. “You are indeed coming to great honors now,”
said the tailor, whose worldly wisdom appeared to be in danger of
overriding his high principles. “And it is not for me to deny that you
have a talent--of a kind that is, Master Shakespeare. But at least, as
you are a Stratford man like myself, I am glad to hear that there are
those who think well of it. What will you put into your comedy, Master
Shakespeare? Love, I presume, and all manner of wantonness?”

“Well, Master Tidey,” said the author, “since you ask the question, you
can no more leave love out of a comedy than you can leave an apple out
of a dumpling. Besides, it is Gloriana’s desire that I should make her
a tale of love, that there should be youth in it and girlhood and high
poesy--that is, if we can rise to poesy in this barren age! And it is
Gloriana’s pleasure that it shall be played before her of a summer’s
afternoon under the greenwood in Richmond Park.”

“You will be making your fortune one of these days, Master
Shakespeare,” said the tailor, upon the verge of awe.

“That is as may be, Master Tidey. At least I would ask nothing better
than to quit the stage. A man’s dignity and a player’s calling don’t
ride well together. In the meantime must I tease my five wits to devise
a play for Gloriana. And it must be made, alas! by the tenth of July.”

“I’d rather you had to do it than had I,” said the tailor, with a sigh
of relief, as he took up the needle and shears.

By now the player was subdued to the process of thought, and was
twisting his short beard between his thumb and forefinger. The eyes
were veiled almost like those of a man in a trance. “I’ve a mind to put
Robin Hood in it,” he said. “The bold outlaw of Sherwood and his merry
men. Many’s the time they have come from the neighboring greenwood into
this famous old town of Nottingham.”

Before, however, the actor could pursue this pleasant idea, there arose
a sharp clatter of hoofs on the cobblestones outside the tailor’s door,
and a minute afterwards a personage entered the shop who at once turned
his thoughts into a new direction.




CHAPTER II


THE personage was a young woman of some eighteen years, breathing
youth and its sorcery in every line. She was tall, well grown, of a
beauty that was remarkable. She stepped with a lithe grace, a springing
freedom that Atalanta would not have disdained. Her long quilted
riding-coat was the last cry of the fashion, and on the left hand she
wore a large hawking-gauntlet. But that which at once caught the eye
both of the tailor and of the player, and made the charming figure
still more memorable, was an audacious pair of leather breeches. These
clothed her nether limbs, and below them were a long pair of boots of
untanned leather.

Now Master Tidey it was who had built this fine pair of
hawking-breeches to the explicit order of the wearer, yet even he could
hardly forbear to be scandalized when he marked its effect. As for the
player--but he had a larger, a more liberal, a more sophisticated mind.
For one thing he had seen the fine ladies of the Court ride out hawking
in this guise. To be sure he had heard some very salutary criticism
of a style of dress that was creeping into vogue among the highest
in the land, but he was not of those who condemned it. Mr. William
Shakespeare, unlike his friend Nicholas Tidey, betrayed not the least
surprise at this young woman’s appearance. Certainly his curiosity was
fully aroused, but perhaps that was less on account of the garment
itself than because of the look of its wearer.

In point of fact, Mr. William Shakespeare, whose eye was very sure in
such matters, was charmed by the spectacle. Swiftly he moved aside,
in order that this young gentlewoman might proceed to the tailor’s
counter. Moreover, as he performed this polite action he removed his
hat with a touch of gallantry, as became an acquaintance with courts.

“Good Master Tailor,” said the wearer of the garment, with an air so
fine as to delight Mr. William Shakespeare still more, “I make you my
compliments upon these hawking-breeches you have been so good as to
devise for me. They are a little tight around the left knee, otherwise
they do excellently well. I make you my compliments upon them, Master
Tailor, and have the goodness to devise me a second pair in every
particular as the first.”

Master Tidey bowed obsequiously. “I attend your pleasure, madam,” he
said.

The young woman then drew off a glove, and with some little difficulty
was able to produce a purse from the recesses of her attire. “What is
your charge, friend, for this excellent garment, which gives me such
ease in the saddle that from this day I am minded to wear no other
style of habiliment.”

“Two angels, if it please you, madam.”

“Here be four, my friend.”

She opened the purse and counted out in gold pieces twice the sum that
was asked.

“Good Master Tailor,” she said, “you have right excellent craft and
your garment pleases me. And if I must speak the truth, I had never
learned until this day what ease and freedom comes of the wearing of
galligaskins.”

She used such a grave air, as of one expressing a most serious and
private thought, that Mr. William Shakespeare, who all this time had
been regarding her covertly, although taking care to appear lost in
contemplation of the coffin-cloth the tailor had now discarded, could
not forbear from giving forth a dry, stealthy chuckle.

Mistress Anne Feversham half turned for the purpose of visiting such a
presumption with an imperious eye. The clear gaze said as plainly as
woman could express it: “And who, pray, are you, sir? Whoever you are
I’ll thank you to be pretty careful.”

Howbeit, in the matter of looking down this presumptuous individual,
young Mistress Anne Feversham, it seemed, had undertaken a task a
little beyond her present powers. There was hardly one among the
burgesses of the town who could have sustained that gaze. But with this
quiet and mild-looking individual, whose coat and sword were so modest,
it was a different matter.

The impact of the proud eyes of Mistress Insolence was met with perfect
composure. Moreover, there was just a suspicion of laughter. In the
opinion of the lady there was no ground for levity. Yet it was almost
as if this person, whose dress was so little pretentious as to be
hardly that of a gentleman, was daring to say in his heart, “Madam,
think not ill of me if I confess that, far from being abashed by your
air, I am rather amused by it.”

That at least was the quick and sensitive feminine interpretation of
the subtle face whose owner was hardly entitled to such a look of arch
and humorous self-confidence. Mistress Anne Feversham felt a slight
wound in her dignity. Who, pray, was this impertinent?

By some means best known to himself, Mr. William Shakespeare appeared
to read the thoughts of the lady. At least the sly smile that had crept
into those somber but wonderful eyes had deepened to a look of roguery.
Mistress Anne grew crimson; the disdainful head went up; she bit her
lip; and then realizing that such a display of embarrassment was
wholly unworthy of the daughter of the Constable of Nottingham Castle,
the pride of youth chastened her so sorely that she turned her back
abruptly on the cause of her defeat.

Soon, however, the ever-abiding sense of place and power came to her
aid and she was able to command herself sufficiently to address the
tailor.

“I see the town is full of play-acting rogues,” she said. “Whence do
they come?”

“From London, madam, I believe,” said Master Tidey, without venturing
to look in the direction of his friend.

“I am afraid they are a saucy-looking crew. My groom”--perhaps it
was well that the voice of Mistress Anne did not reach the ears of
the haughty young falconer who was taking charge of her horse at the
tailor’s door--“my groom pointed them out to me as I passed the Moot
Hall. As soon as I return to the Castle I will inform my father the
Constable, and I will see if they cannot be put in the stocks, which to
my mind is where they belong.”

As became the shrewd man he was, Master Nicholas Tidey made no reply.
He was content to nod his head gravely, as if he tacitly approved,
while at the same time he contrived to keep a tail of an eye upon his
distinguished friend. There might or there might not have been a ghost
of a smile upon that prim and cautious mouth.

Indeed, very wisely, Master Tidey left it to the play-actor himself
to try a fall with such a formidable adversary. And this that daring
individual proceeded to do in a manner quite cool and leisurely, and
yet with a vastly considered air. In his eye, it was true, there was
a suspicion of something far other than gravity. That of course was
regrettable; but it was undoubtedly there.

Mr. William Shakespeare’s first act was to remove his hat with its
single short cock’s feather, and then he bowed very low indeed, in the
manner of one quite well aware of addressing a social superior.

“Cry you mercy, mistress,” he said, “but as one who is himself a poor
actor may he ask wherein his guild has had the unhappiness to offend
you?”

Mistress Anne Feversham met this effrontery with a disdain that was
wonderful. Her chief concern at the moment was to show her great
contempt without a descent into downright ill-breeding. But as soon as
she met the somber eyes of this individual, in which a something that
was rare and strange was overlaid by a subtle mockery, this natural
instinct took wings and fled. In those eyes was something that hardly
left her mistress of herself, in spite of her father the Constable, her
young blood-horse and her incomparable pair of galligaskins.

“My father the Constable would have all play-actors whipped,” said
Mistress Anne Feversham.

But her voice was not as she had intended it to be. Moreover, her
father the Constable had yet to deliver himself of such an illiberal
sentiment. And this graceless individual seemed to be fully aware that
this was the case.

“Whipped, mistress!” His look of grave consternation did not deceive
her. “You would whip a poor actor!”

“All who are actors, sir, my father would.”

“Is it conceivable?--the gentlest, the humblest, the most industrious,
the most law-abiding of men!”

“My father cares not for that, sir. He says they are masterless rogues.”

“Then by my faith, mistress, that is very froward in your father.”

“He says they are the scum of taverns and alehouses and they corrupt
the public mind.”

“Ods my life! how comes so crabbed a sire to have a daughter so fair,
so feat, so charming!”

It began to seem hopeless for Mistress Anne to continue in such a
strain of severity. For a moment she used her will in order to punish
this audacity, but in the next she was trembling upon the verge of open
laughter. Still the consciousness that she was no less a person than
the only daughter and heiress of Sir John Feversham, the Constable of
Nottingham Castle and chief justice of the forest of Sherwood, was just
able to save her from that which could only have been regarded in the
light of a disaster.

“I would fain inform you, mistress, there are play-actors whom even the
Queen approves.”

Alas! Mistress Anne had a full share of the cynical irreverence of
youth.

“I am not at all surprised to learn that, sir. I have even been told
that the Queen dyes her hair.”

The effect of a speech so daring was to startle Master Tidey quite
visibly. The world looks to one of his craft to have a conventional
mind, and there was no doubt the times were perilous. The shears almost
fell from his hand. If this was not treason, might he never sew another
doublet!

The play-actor, however, was of a fiber less delicate. It was as much
as Mr. William Shakespeare could do to refrain from open laughter.

“May I ask, mistress,” he said, “what is your warrant for such a grave
charge against the Queen’s Majesty?”

“The warrant of my own eyes, sir. Her hair was certainly dyed when she
stayed at the Castle a month since.”

“But bethink you, mistress, might it not appear less treasonable if
Gloriana’s true subjects presumed her hair to be a wig?”

“Let them presume nothing, sir, but that which is the truth.”

“To so pious a resolve even a poor actor may say amen.”

Mistress Anne realized that she was no match for this man. The
only hope for her dignity lay in a cool scorn of him. Suddenly the
gloriously straight back was turned disdainfully. Let the greatest lady
for ten miles beware how she chopped logic with a strolling actor.

“Master Tailor, I would have you devise me a second pair of these
right excellent breeches, in every particular as the first, and do you
have them at the Castle against the first of May.”

Master Tidey bowed low.

“Good-day to you, Master Tailor.”

Master Tidey bowed still lower with that clear and proud speech in his
ears.

With chin held high, and with an arrogant, free-swinging carriage,
Mistress Anne Feversham went forth of the tailor’s shop. But even
then, abrupt as was the manner of her going, she had to submit to the
play-actor’s leaping to the door before she could reach it herself. He
opened it and held it for her with the grace and dignity of a courtier.
She passed imperiously, without yielding him a glance or a “Thank you.”

A dashing young man in the livery of a falconer was holding the
young blood-horse of Mistress Anne outside the tailor’s door. He was
handsomely mounted on an animal similar to the one he held for his
mistress. On his fist was a small falcon, hoodwinked and fessed.

Very agile was the lady in finding her way into the saddle. For all
that she was not quite clever enough to defeat this incorrigible
play-actor. He sprang to her stirrup while she had one foot still
on the ground and hoisted her up with an address that enforced her
respect, and with so grave an air of courtesy as tacitly to compel her
own.

All the same she was angry. And she had sense enough to know that it
was illogical to be so. Yet she swung her horse around sharply in order
to give expression to her state of mind. And as the falconer, John
Markham by name, confided the merlin to the accustomed wrist of his
mistress, he turned back an instant to scowl at the player. It was even
as if he would ask him who the devil he was, and what the devil he did
there.

The player removed his hat with its single cock’s feather in a manner
that was almost tenderly ironical. It had hardly been a display of
Court manners of which he had been the recipient. But he was too much a
man of the world to look for those everywhere. And above all here was
youth in its glamour, youth in its sorcery. For the sake of a stuff so
precious he would forgive a crudity greater than this.

With a sigh of delight the player stood at the tailor’s door to watch
this fine pair ride very slowly and haughtily down the street. For
all their air of class consciousness and their open contempt of the
townspeople, which their youth alone saved from being ridiculous, they
made a glorious pair in the eye of the part-proprietor of the Globe
Theatre, London.

That was an eye to judge men and things as none other since the world
began. Neither Mistress Anne Feversham nor the falconer was aware of
that fact, and had they been aware of it they had not cared a button.
All that they did know and all that they cared was that the worthy
burgesses of Nottingham were stealing glances of awe and admiration
at them. In a word, they were causing a sensation, and were very
pleasantly alive to the fact.

Yes, undoubtedly a gallant pair. John Markham, in spite of his superior
condition and rising renown, rode behind his mistress at a respectful
distance of ten yards. They sat their horses with great skill and
assurance. First one and then the other, as they walked them slowly
down the street, would touch them gently with the spur, in order to
enjoy the pleasure of showing them off in the sight of the townspeople.

The player, still standing at the tailor’s door, could not take his
eyes from the spectacle. Almost wistfully, and yet in a kind of
entrancement, he watched them until at last there came a turn in the
street and they were lost to view. Then he went within to rejoin his
scandalized friend, who to compose his mind had had recourse already to
the needle and shears.

“I never saw the like o’ that,” said Master Nicholas Tidey. “It’s rare
to be the quality. But that’s nothing to you, Master Shakespeare. I
reckon you see it every day o’ the week.”

“It’s a fine thing, I grant you, when it rides proud in the sight of
heaven,” said the player abstractedly.

“Aye, Master Shakespeare, and even when it goes afoot!” said the
tailor, whose mind was more pedestrian. “It does a man good, I always
think, to have a sight of the quality now and again. But as I say,
Master Shakespeare, it is nothing to you who go to Court like a
gentleman.”

But the part-proprietor of the Globe Theatre was not heeding the words
of his friend. The light that never was on sea or land had come into
those somber eyes. Suddenly his hand struck the tailor’s counter a
great blow. “That is an adorable miniard,” he said. “By my soul, if
Gloriana requires a comedy, here is matter for a comedy for Gloriana!”




CHAPTER III


IN the meantime, the unconscious cause of Mr. William Shakespeare’s
enthusiasm was proceeding somewhat arrogantly through the streets of
the town. Mistress Anne Feversham was mightily proud of herself, of
her young blood-horse, of her pied merlin, above all of her brand-new
hawking-breeches, which she had had the audacity to copy from two
particularly dashing ladies of the Court who had accompanied the Queen
on her recent visit to Nottingham.

As for John Markham, she was proud of him too. He made a fine squire.
But nothing would have induced her to let him know it. None the less
surely was he subdued to her purposes. A wise fellow in all things
else, he was the true knight, the ready slave of his young mistress.
And his young mistress was imperious.

High temper was in every clean-run line of her. It was in the eye,
a thing of mist and fire, gloriously placed like that of one of
Leonardo’s ladies. It was in the nose, curved like the beak of her
merlin; in the delicate molding of the chin and mouth, in the slender
column of the throat, in the poise of the head, in the supple assurance
of the body which ruled a beast of mettle and goaded it into setting
up its will for the pleasure of subduing it.

John Markham, with a head beyond his years, was passing wise for his
station. He was no ordinary servant, but one high in the regard of
Sir John Feversham, the Constable of Nottingham Castle, that grim
pile half-a-mile off, rising sheer from its rock in the midst of the
water-meadows. Learned in hawking, he was esteemed by gentle and simple
for many a mile. His skill in the craft of princes had even carried his
fame as far as Belvoir, under whose shadow he had been bred. He was a
shrewd, a skilful, a bold young fellow, wise in all things except that
he worshiped the ground upon which his young mistress trod.

That was the fault of his youth. He had been less than he was, far
less, could he have attended her pleasure without dreaming of her in
the long watches of the night, or desiring in his hours of madness
that she should plunge into his heart the silver-hilted poniard she
wore at her waist. This was her eighteenth birthday, and he was rising
twenty-five. She was rich, important, beautiful, capricious. For she
was the only child and heiress of the greatest man for ten miles round.

And he, who was he? Well, if the truth must be told, he was the byblow
of a kitchen-wench and one of great place who had shown him not a spark
of kindness. Yes, if the truth must be told--and John Markham thanked
no man for telling it--born and bred under the shadow of Belvoir, given
the soul and the features of a noble race, but without birth, favor or
education, except that he was learned in hawking. Encased in that fine
livery was a strong, tormented soul.

His young mistress never allowed him to forget that he was a servant.
In her gentlest moods she would throw her words to him as if he had
been a dog. She knew he was her slave, happy only in his chains, one
barred by fortune from an equality she could never forgive his not
being able to claim. His passive acceptance of the bar seemed to make
her cruel. He was so tall, so brave, so handsome; not a man in all the
county of Notts could cast a main of hawks like him. Only a month ago
the Queen had praised him to his face. Yet was he like a hound that
came to heel at her word, or a horse that took sugar out of her hand
without hurting it. In the presence of others he could be proud enough,
but in hers he was as humble as the meanest of her servants, who asks
only to be allowed to wait upon her will.

At this moment, be it said, the will of Mistress Anne was making John
Markham decidedly unhappy. It had done so indeed for a fortnight past.
In the Queen’s train during her recent visit to Sir John, his master,
at the Castle, had come the ladies of her household. Among these had
been two who, not to put too fine a point upon the matter, had given
Mistress Anne ideas. Brazenly enough as it had seemed to chaste minds,
yet it was to be feared with the sanction of their august mistress, had
they gone a-hawking in the meadows astride their horses, the nether
woman arrayed in brown leather galligaskins!

Honest John Markham was not alone in his horror of so sad a spectacle.
More than one graybeard had wagged over it in the buttery; more than
one prim kirtle had lamented it bitterly in the hall. What were the
women of England coming to, if the highest in the land--! The matter
was one scarce fit for persons of delicacy. If such a practice spread,
who should say to what heights ere long the vaunting spirit of woman
would aspire?

Alas! the matter had not ended here. Mistress Anne, in the very
insolence of daring, had seen the last word in modishness in this most
perilous innovation. Nothing would content her but that she should have
a pair of leather hawking-breeches for her wear. John Markham, that
trusty henchman, was sent at once to Master Nicholas Tidey, the man’s
tailor of Nottingham, with careful instructions from his mistress.

She was not able herself to visit that worthy, because she had been
expressly forbidden by her father to pass through the town gate. Thus
had the task been laid upon John Markham of haranguing the accomplished
Master Tidey. And in the last resort he summoned that famous craftsman
in person to the Castle, since it presently appeared that there are
subtleties in the design of a pair of hawking-breeches which cannot be
dealt with by third parties. Finally John it was who bore the sinister
parcel into the Castle under cover of night, carrying it with his
own faithful hands into the presence of the lady on the eve of the
eighteenth anniversary of her birth.

Truly a very perilous innovation. Honest John did not go beyond that.
Whether that other honest John, his master, from whom she derived her
over-riding temper, would be content with such a moderation--well, that
was a matter that the future would soon be called upon to decide.

Mistress Anne, riding slowly down the street ten yards ahead of the
falconer, checking her blood-horse, Cytherea, with one hand and holding
her pied merlin in the other, was a picture to haunt the young man’s
dreams for many a day to come. Already she had much skill in the art
he had taught her: she could bring down her bird with the best; she
sat her horse like a young goddess; the galligaskins of supple brown
leather--alas! that was a subject to which the honest fellow durst not
lend his mind.

As they rode through the town, many a sly glance was stolen at the
wearer of the brown leather galligaskins. But the expression on the
face of the falconer said clearly enough: “Be wary of your gaze, my
masters. There is a broken costard for any who are froward of eye.”

Nevertheless Mistress Anne made a nine days’ wonder in the ancient
borough of Nottingham. Presently the town was behind them. Instead of
returning straight to the Castle, they made for the open meadows all
spread with blue and white and yellow crocuses, which in the spring of
the year weave their vivid carpet by the banks of Trent. Soon they had
come to the narrow wooden bridge that spanned the broad and deep river.
John Markham’s horse, young and half-broken, suddenly took exception to
the quick-flowing torrent under its feet. It swerved so sharply that it
all but threw him.

Hearing the sound of the fierce scuffle, Mistress Anne looked back. She
was in time to see John struggling to regain the saddle from which he
had so nearly parted company. “Clumsy fellow!” she cried. “You sit your
horse like a----”

While she was in the act of finding a figure of speech to meet the
case, her own horse realized its opportunity. Nor was it slow to turn
it to account. Cytherea made a thoroughly competent attempt to pitch
her rider into the river. She just failed, it is true, but that was
more because her luck was out than for any lack of honest intention.

Cytherea’s bold rider was no believer in half measures. She soon had
her in hand, duly admonished her with shrewd jabs of her long spurs and
came a second time within an ace of being flung into the river. Not
brooking cold steel, Cytherea fought for her head like a tigress. She
got her forefeet onto the low rail of the bridge. There was a desperate
moment of uncertainty, in which the issue hung in the balance, and then
Cytherea had to bring her forefeet down again.

“The fault is yours, John Markham,” said Cytherea’s rider. “You are, I
say, a clumsy fellow. You sit your horse like a--” Again she paused to
find a simile worthy of the occasion. “You sit your horse like a sack
of peas.”

John did not reply, but hung his diminished head.

“Here, take the merlin,” said his mistress, and by now there was a
steady light in her eyes. “And give me that whip of yours.”

But the falconer, fully conscious of his daring, summoned all his
courage. “Wait till we are across the bridge, I pray you, mistress.”

“Give me your whip, sirrah. If this rude beast gets me into the river
I’ll warrant she comes in herself.”

“No, mistress,” said the falconer. “I dare not. The rail is too low and
the bridge is too narrow.”

“Hand it to me at once, I say!” The face of Cytherea’s wilful rider was
full of menace.

Never before had the falconer dared to oppose her will, but it was
almost certain death if now he obeyed it.

“Do you not hear me, sirrah?”

“You shall have it, mistress, as soon as we are across the bridge.”

There was nothing for it but to wait until they had gained the opposite
bank. Once among the crocuses, the lady reined in the still mutinous
Cytherea with no light hand. She then turned her unruly steed to meet
that of the falconer.

“Now, sirrah!”

The gauntleted hand was held out grimly. The eyes were like stars in
their dark luster; and in the center of each cheek burned a glowing
crimson.

John Markham lifted the merlin from the fist of his mistress. Then he
gave her the whip. There was not a drop of blood in his cheeks. His
fixed, unfearing gaze had not a shade of defiance; but it was as if the
upturned face almost invited that which awaited it.

“You fool!”

The whip descended sharply, but without haste, on the lithe and
beautiful flanks of the astonished Cytherea. One, two, three. It was
a hazardous proceeding. For more than one long minute the issue lay
in doubt. But skill and high courage gained the day. The dignity of a
daughter of men was vindicated at the expense of the dignity of the
daughter of goddesses.

“I thank you, John Markham.”

She returned the whip to the falconer with almost an air of kindness.




CHAPTER IV


THIS was a brave thing, already out to set up its will against the
world. And of the little world in which she lived her father was the
center of authority. He was an august man, high in the service of the
Queen. His explicit word was not lightly to be disobeyed. And it had
gone forth with no uncertainty. Upon no pretext must Mistress Anne
Feversham enter the town of Nottingham, which nestled close about the
Castle rock.

But she was eighteen years old this day, of a head-strong blood,
motherless, craving adventure. The fire in her veins was mounting
high. It must have an outlet, it must find escape from within the grim
precincts of that old fortress which had begun to press upon her life.

Alas! as they returned to the Castle after an hour’s larking among the
crocuses, John Markham’s heart sank. He had been a party to a forbidden
thing. And he knew not what pains, what penalties might overtake the
charming culprit if her naughtiness came to his master’s ear. Moreover,
a share of the consequences was like to fall upon himself. But the
falconer was not the man to care very much about that. He would have
asked nothing better than to be allowed to pay the whole of that
reckoning which he knew very well was bound sooner or later to confront
his young mistress.

That young woman fully realized her guilt. Yet she was far from being
afraid. Indeed, as they rode back in the glow of the April sunset
to the stern house which kept the old town in awe, she was like a
strong-winged bird that knew already the power of its pinions. The
brief and sharp battle with Cytherea, whose end had been a proper
mending of manners for that unruly beast, had put her in great heart.
She was keen for a further display of her powers. Never had she used
her servant with such a magnanimity, never with such a humorous
indulgence.

It was as if she would say to all the world: “See what a will I have.
Be it known to all men it is vain for any to oppose it.”

Nevertheless John Markham was sad at heart. Out of his high devotion
to her she might command him anything, but well he knew there could
only be one end to this overweening mood. The galligaskins were a sore
matter, although the Constable had not seen them yet. As for the visit
to the town, it was neither more nor less than an open flout to his
authority. John had a troubled heart as they passed through the Castle
gate.

As if to confirm the falconer in his fears, Mistress Anne was informed
by the porter of the lodge as they passed through the gate that the
Constable desired her immediate presence in his own apartment.

“For what purpose does he seek it?” The question was asked with the
impatience of a spoiled child.

“I know not, mistress,” said the porter gravely. “I do but know that
when the Constable returned from his ride in the town he asked for you
and left the message I have given.”

“When did Sir John return?”

“Not an hour ago, mistress.”

In the courtyard, with an air of resolute laughter, Mistress Anne
yielded her horse to the falconer’s care. Unabashed, in her amazing
garment, which set off her long-flanked slenderness adorably, she
strode into the great house. The fine, free gait was not without
a suspicion of a manly swagger, which the Queen’s ladies had also
affected. Boldly and fearlessly she entered the presence of the august
Sir John Feversham.

The Constable was seated alone in his dark-paneled room. It was easy
to see whence came his young daughter’s handsome looks and strength of
will. It was a face that few of that age could have matched for power
and masculine beauty. The gray eyes had a very direct and searching
quality, the forehead was lofty and ascetic; indeed the man’s whole
aspect proclaimed that here was one who had learned many high secrets
not only of the body, but of the soul.

This was not a man to be trifled with, and none knew that better than
his daughter. But this unhappy day she was a young woman overborne by a
sense of her own consequence.

“You sent for me, Sir John.” The voice was half defiance, half disdain.

“Yes, mistress, I did so.”

The tones of the Constable were a deep, slow growl. They were used in a
way of such reluctance that it seemed a pain to utter them.

“Wherefore, Sir John, did you send for me?” The half-humorous tones
were all of innocence.

The Constable’s reply was a grave stroking of the chin. The stern gaze
began very slowly to traverse the culprit as she stood in all her
sauciness, in all her defiance. Not a detail of her manners or of her
attire escaped those grim eyes. “Why did I send for you? Do you venture
to ask the question?”

In spite of her reckless courage the tones sent little shivers through
Mistress Anne.

“Yes, Sir John, I do.” She had summoned all that she had of boldness.

“As you dare to ask the question, I will answer it.” It was as if the
Constable turned over each word very carefully in his stern heart
before it was born upon his grim lips. “First I would say to you,
daughter, there is a long and ever-growing accompt between you and me
which has begun to cry aloud for a settlement. I ask you, is it not so?”

Mistress Anne was silent. Even her strength of will had begun at last
to fail before this slow-gathering vehemence. Once before, and once
only, had she heard that tone in her father’s voice. Many years had
passed since then, but on hearing it again the occasion suddenly came
back to her, bringing with it a kind of vivid horror.

“Is it not so, I ask you?”

The tone was that of a judge.

“Daily have I marked a growing frowardness, daily have I marked a
higher measure of your impudency.” The careful words had no unkindness.
“It is but a week since these ears heard you mock at the color of the
hair of the Queen’s most gracious majesty. Is it not so?”

Mistress Anne had no wish to deny that.

“And now to-day do I find you tricked out in a manner whose wicked
unseemliness passes all belief. Furthermore, in open defiance of my
command, you have entered the town. Is it not so?”

The culprit had no word now. The imperious valor was routed utterly.

“I do fear me,” said the Constable, “you are in the toils of a disease
which admits only of the sharpest remedy. Week by week have I remarked
an ever-growing sauciness. It is a malady which in man or woman, horse
or hound, can only be met in one way.”

The Constable rose slowly from his chair. He was a tall, powerful man,
and very formidable and even terrible he looked. He took down a heavy
hunting-whip which hung from a nail on the wall. His daughter had not
imagination enough to be terrified easily. Moreover for her years she
had a particularly resolute will. It was this that an imminent peril
restored to her.

“I will not be beaten,” she said, with proud defiance. “This day I am
eighteen years old. This day I am a woman, and being a woman I will do
in all things as it pleases me.”

The Constable ran the long whip through his fingers. “Oh and soh,
mistress,” said he, “this day you claim the estate of womanhood. And
having come to that high condition you put forth a modest claim to do
in all things as you would. Well, I am bound to say I have heard that a
number of the women of the present age have these froward ideas. But
it is new to me that there are any so vain as to practice them.”

“Wherefore should they not, Sir John?” The clear and brave eyes of his
daughter were fixed on his own. “Is it not that in all things a woman
is the equal of a man, as the Queen herself has shown, always except in
those wherein she is a man’s superior?”

Again the Constable caressed the whip as though he loved it. “These be
very perilous ideas,” he said. “I had not thought this canker had bit
so deep. Of all the diseases that afflict our sorry age I believe there
is none so vile as that which leads a young gentlewoman of careful and
modest nurture to speeches of such an idle vanity. As I am a Christian
man I can hardly believe my ears.”

“Sir John, it is the truth I speak. And has not the Queen herself
approved it?”

“Nay, mistress, I would have you use that name more modestly,” said the
Constable. But now in his eyes was a light that turned her cold.

Very gently the great thong was being shaken out. The long and cruel
length was uncoiling itself like that of a serpent, so that now it lay
crouching in wait among the rushes of the floor.

“I will not be beaten,” was all that Anne could gasp. “I am this day a
woman.”

With a sudden chill of despair she knew that she was helpless. And
if she had not known, in the very next instant that cruel fact would
have been revealed to her. With a surprising dexterous swiftness for
which she was not prepared, the slender wrist was twisted in a lock so
cunning that to struggle would be to break the arm.

“As I am a Christian man it is my duty to cut away so damnable a
heresy.” The sharp, hissing words came through shut teeth.

The defenceless form was held at arm’s length. In the implacable eyes
of the Constable was the sinister fanaticism which is not afraid to
wound itself.




CHAPTER V


“OH, mistress!”

A voice that had music in it sounded from the top of the high wall.

Anne had spent a dreadful night of pain and misery in one of the milder
of the Castle dungeons. That is to say, it was above the ground. Also
it was free of vermin, it was tolerably well lit, and was provided
with a small inclosed yard open to the sky, but surrounded by a high
wall garnished with spikes. Her first night of womanhood had been of
a bitterness she had not thought it possible to know. There had only
been a crust of bread, a jug of water and a bare pallet to assuage her
tears. She had crept out of her cell in the darkness, and at last,
quite exhausted, had fallen asleep under the April stars, with but a
slab of icy stone to ease her hurts.

But now the dawn was come, and from far overhead a charming voice
saluted her waking ears.

She looked up. A fair head crowned with morning was thrust between the
close-set spikes. A young man with the bravest eyes in the world was
gazing down compassionately upon her.

“Oh, mistress!”

Almost involuntarily she drew the cloak which had been given her
the closer about her aches. But it was not possible to conceal her
pathetic, her terrible distress.

“Oh, mistress!”

For the third time the charming voice saluted her ears, not mockingly,
not unkindly, not even curiously. In it was a gentleness, a subtle
power of sympathy that, do as she would, started her tears anew. She
drew the cloak closer about her shoulders, as if by so doing she could
conceal the fact that she had been used very grievously.

“You have been a-weeping, mistress.”

It was idle to deny a fact so plain.

Yesterday she would have met this boldness in a very different way. But
that was past. In one long night of intolerable anguish her very nature
had suffered a change.

“For why do you weep, mistress?”

Again was the voice like music. She could not forbear to look up into
the dawn, which framed with its golden rose a fair head and a pair of
brave, honest and gentle eyes.

“Is it for a grievous fault? Nay, but I am sure it is not.”

The tone was all kindness, all concern. Besides, there was some strange
magic in it that had never sounded in her ears until that hour.

“Never tell me, mistress, that you are to have your head cut off on
Tuesday by order of the Queen.”

The words were spoken in a manner almost whimsical. But as, startled
and perhaps a little terrified, she gazed up to meet those eyes she
suddenly saw that unutterable things lay behind their laughter.

The words, the look seemed almost to sicken her. And then like a
strong wine a thrill of compassion ran in her veins. She rose to her
feet unsteadily. Her body was so weak that she had to lean it against
the wall. A thousand intolerable aches returned. She opened her lips to
speak, but her voice was mute.

Looking down upon her distress, the eyes of the young man were as full
of compassion as her own. The face of the girl was stained and swollen
with tears; she could hardly check a groan when she moved; the cloak
slipping from her shoulders revealed under the torn bodice the cruel
marks of the whip.

“Oh, mistress!” The voice was tender as the missel-thrush. “What was
your fault that this should have been done to you? But whatever it was,
sweet mistress, you have had savage payment.”

Even as she hid her own she knew that the gentle eyes were brimming
with pity.

But what were these slight aches of hers in the comparison with his own
grim pass? On Tuesday he was to have his head cut off by order of the
Queen. Suddenly a wild flood of anguish surged at her heart. Could such
a thing be under the light of heaven? He so fair, so kind, with the
fire of youth in his eyes, must the rich and glad life be torn from him
in a manner so unspeakable within a space of four short days?

Again she sought to speak. This time words came; at first few and
fitful, but warm from a heart all broken with pity. “They will kill you
on Tuesday?” she said.

The horror that ran like ice in her veins thrilled in her voice.

“Yes, mistress. The Queen has signed the warrant. And I have done as
little to deserve death as this fair April morning that I cannot bear
to lose. But no matter. I have had three-and-twenty years of this
golden life, so I have no ground of complaint.”

His courage spoke to her like a noble action.

“For why will they kill you?” Her heart was choking her.

“They say I was concerned with Money the Papist in the Woodgate House
plot against the Queen’s life. Two subtle knaves have sworn it, but as
I desire to go to heaven I am an entirely innocent man.”

She never doubted him. It was impossible to doubt such eyes, such a
voice, such a noble bearing.

“I know not Money nor Woodgate House, and so far from desiring the
life of the Queen I am the faithfullest if I am also the least of her
Majesty’s servants.”

“Oh, it must not be!” she cried in a kind of passion.

“There is no means to prevent it,” said the young man. “The judges
would not hear my book oath. But I think my peace is made with God. I
am already composed for the scaffold, as I hope and believe, although
it is bitterly sore to me to leave a world such as this. Yet if I
complain I shall be unworthy of my twenty-three years of glorious life.
But tell me, mistress, of your own case. What have you done that they
should use you so cruelly? It cuts me to the soul to see you like this.”

But she could give no heed now to her own pains. Her mind was filled
with horror, with a rage of pity. His bearing was so noble, so full of
an instant tenderness, and in four brief days he must die by the ax in
the pride and splendor of his youth.

“Oh, I cannot bear it,” she cried. “I cannot think of you as at the
point of death.”

The potent wine of youth in her own veins rendered the thought
intolerable. Such a rush of anguish came upon her young heart as made
even the long miseries of the night seem of no account.

“No, no, it cannot be. I must speak to my father.”

“Pray, who is your father, mistress?”

“My father is Sir John Feversham, the Constable of this Castle.”

“Alas! mistress, it is he who read to me the Queen’s warrant. He of all
men cannot help me, for it is he who is pledged to do the Queen’s will.”

She who yesterday had ventured to proclaim herself the equal of all men
was now shaken with a storm of weeping. “I will go myself to the Queen
and swear to her your innocence.”

“Alas! mistress, there is no time. Besides, she would not heed you. A
subtle enemy has done his work, and I have given up all hope of life.
But by God’s grace on Tuesday I am determined to die well.”

Her sorrow for this brave man was a thing to see. The proud heart was
wrung with a distress that her own cruel suffering may have rendered
more poignant. Yesterday, in the hour of her shallow arrogance,
compassion for his fate might have irked her less. But since then she
had known the dark night of the soul. Something seemed to have broken
inside her heart. Henceforward in her plastic woman’s nature would be a
subtle kinship with all great suffering, since she herself had known it.

“Is there naught I may do to save you?”

“There is nothing, mistress. Yet I love you for your pitiful heart,
and I’ll promise you that on Tuesday I’ll walk the firmer for it. But
do not consider me, I pray you. I do not think I am unhappy. I would
that you were not, sweet mistress. Tell me why you have been used so
cruelly?”

His voice was grave and beguiling, like one whose soul has deep places
in it. In despite of the slow agony of her tears she had no choice but
to heed it. There was in his tender speech a quality that melted her
resolve as though it had been but a flake of snow.

“Tell me, sweet mistress, I pray you.”

How could she tell him of her frowardness? How could she tell him of
the setting up of her stubborn will and of the grievous fashion of its
breaking? How could she tell him that in a single night she was cured
forever of the folly of holding herself other than she was?

But his gentle insistence was beyond her power to put off.

“I have been beaten,” she said with utter humility. “And all that has
been done to me is no more than my merit.”

It was the elemental woman breaking from the soul that yesterday was so
vainglorious. The young man looking upon her from his precarious coign
felt his heart leap to her in her abasement. In the delicacy of her
youth she was the fairest thing upon which ever he had set his eyes.
It hurt him keener than his own fate that a beauty so rare should,
whatever its faults, have been chastened so cruelly.

All that there was of chivalry in his tender soul went out to her in
her desolation. In his three-and-twenty years of life he had never
known love, but by God’s grace was it given that he would not have to
die without tasting the rarest of all mortal experiences.

“Mistress”--his heart leaped in his throat so that he could hardly
breathe--“Give me your name, sweet mistress, and I will promise as God
is in His heaven that on Tuesday morning when Gervase Heriot comes to
die by the ax he shall pass with your name upon his lips.”

Like wells of soft light her eyes shone up to him. “My name is Anne,”
she said, with a simplicity that yesterday had not been hers.

“Mistress Anne, will you pray for me when I am passing?”

He could not hear her answer, yet he knew what it was.

“God keep you, sweet mistress! God keep you forever! I will bear your
name on my lips through all the wide fields of eternity.”

These high-vaunting words were his last. No longer could he keep his
precarious hold on the top of the wall. The strain on arms and knees
was too much. Suddenly the eyes so full of courage and pity were lost
to her.

Anne was left to reel against the wall of her prison, shaken with an
anguish more terrible than any the long night had known.




CHAPTER VI


GERVASE HERIOT had entered upon the last hours of his life. It was
arranged that he should die at eight o’clock of the April morning. He
lay in his cell during the watches of the night that was to be his
last upon earth, with every sense a-stretch. Try as he would--and
God only could know how he had fought during these last weeks for
self-mastery--he could not subdue the insurgency of ardent blood, the
intense desire to live.

He was too young for death. He loved the sun, the blue sky, the green
grass, the birds in the trees, the spring flowers, the abundant,
sweet-smelling earth. He loved his fellow-men. They amused and
interested him. He adored the beauty of women. His ears were attuned to
delicate harmonies of sound, his eyes were ravished by feasts of color.

The world, that wonderful assemblance of things visible, entranced him
in its glad, mysterious majesty. There was the soul of a poet in a
frame all a-quiver with youth. As he lay in his cell in the darkness,
tossing feverishly upon his pallet through the slow hours, he could not
bear the thought that all too soon he would see the sun rise for the
last time.

It drove him nearly mad to think that he must leave it all, that
his brief sojourn upon the fair and noble earth which he loved so
passionately was at an end. He was too strong of blood for such a
death. With all the force of his will had he striven to compose
himself. Many prayers had he addressed to God that it might be given
to him to meet his fate with the high dignity that was the due of
his manhood. But as now he lay shuddering in the darkness, do as he
would he could not bring his mind to accept the end. Times and again
he pressed his wild eyes to his pallet with a half-strangled moan of
despair.

The fact that he was an entirely innocent man did nothing to console
him. Indeed, had he been guilty, death had been less hard to bear. But
coming to him in this arbitrary, unjust guise, its cruel causelessness
set his every fiber in revolt.

Faint sounds began to creep through the night. All too soon his
quivering senses caught them. Subtle as they were, he knew them at once
for the noise of hammers upon wood. O God! they were setting up the
scaffold in the courtyard. In spite of the strength he had won in these
last few weeks he rolled off the pallet onto his knees and began to
pray wildly. A fever shook his mind. His new-found strength was leaving
him. Death--and such a death!--was a thing he did not know how to meet.
A grim terror took hold of him.

And then a thing happened to him which shook the central forces of his
being.

Suddenly he saw the face of Anne. He saw it all wan and swollen with
tears. And as he looked he saw the eyes grow starlike and great with
their compassion. And then he remembered his vaunt to her that he would
walk firmly in his last hour, and that her name should be upon his
lips. Her image was hardly more than that of a mortal daughter of men;
but that which had sprung from her own bruised spirit, which looked out
of her eyes as now he saw them in the darkness, was the only evidence
he had of the Eternal. Some immortal essence had fused her heart as so
humbly and so pitifully she had looked up to him. Through those eyes he
had seen God.

Such a thought had the power to offer a measure of ease to his
torments. The dreadful tumult began to grow less. Those eyes were as
stars in that gross darkness. No longer was he afraid. A strange peace
had begun to bear him upon its wings.

No longer had he cause to fear the noise of the hammers. Let the
morning break. Let death come when it would. His fainting spirit had
now a manifestation to which to cling. He would walk to the scaffold
with this noble image in his heart, and it should accompany him forever
in his wanderings through the wide fields of eternity.

He crept back to his pallet, and stretched out his fever-racked limbs
to their full length. A profound peace was enfolding him. If only death
could come now!

Long he lay thus, and as he lay he strained his eyes to catch the first
faint light of the dawn. Would it never arrive? All his fear now was
lest this new strength should flee as suddenly as it had been given.
But no!--the ineffable spirit that had entered into him would continue
through all eternity to bear his soul.

At last and quite suddenly a more instant sound began to mingle with
the distant noise of the hammers. A key was grating in the lock of the
door. Yes, his hour was here at last and he had not known it. With a
feeling akin to relief he sat up on his pallet.

He heard the door creak gently. It then came open with so little
sound as to thrill him with surprise. A faint thread of light gleamed
fitfully. But whoever was the visitant, he was accompanied by a silence
so profound as to fill Gervase Heriot with wonder. It was not thus that
his jailers had been wont to visit him.

“Mr. Heriot.”

The name was breathed rather than spoken. There was a curious
familiarity in the voice as it stole through the darkness. His heart
seemed to stop beating.

He tried to answer, but could not.

“Mr. Heriot.”

Beyond the faint rays of a half-shuttered lantern was the outline of a
dark form.

“Mr. Heriot.”

His name was being breathed in his ears. A hand had touched him.

“Oh, it is you!” were the first words his tongue could find.

“Do not speak,” whispered Anne Feversham. “Do not make a sound. But if
you would live follow close without a question.”

He rose from his pallet unsteadily. He was utterly bewildered and very
weak from many vigils. But already the lantern had begun to move away
from him, and it was a talisman that had the power to draw him after it.

Almost before he was aware of what he did he realized that he was
beyond the door of his cell.

“Please wait while I lock the door again,” whispered his deliverer, “so
that they may not know too soon.”

Her deliberation, her calmness filled him with wonder.

Step by step they groped their way along a very narrow corridor that
smelled close and evil. The damp glistened from the walls in the light
of the lantern.

With infinite caution they made their way to the end of the long
passage. And as they neared its end there arose the sound of a man
snoring heavily. A jailer was fast asleep on a low stool that had been
placed just within the outer door of the prison. He was a gross-looking
fellow, and his large legs were stretched out to the full, barring
completely the narrow way.

They used great caution in striding over these legs lest they should
wake their owner. When they had safely cleared this obstacle Anne gave
Gervase the lantern, and also a poniard from a belt which she wore
round her waist. “I am going to replace the keys in his girdle,” she
whispered resolutely. “I do not think he will wake; a powder has been
shaken into his posset. But should you see him rousing himself, plunge
the dagger into his heart. I have not the courage to do it myself.”

With a delicate deftness, with a cool precision that was remarkable,
Anne reattached the keys to the girdle of the sleeping man. He did not
so much as stir in his sleep.

“Now!” she whispered.

In the next moment they had crept noiselessly through the unbarred
outer door. The cool morning air rushed upon them. They felt the
delicious green turf under their feet.

For all that the shrewd air played about the condemned man’s temples,
for all that the soft grass was under him, for all that a young moon
and a sky of faint stars was over his head, he could hardly believe he
was alive, or if alive could hardly realize he was broad awake.

Less than a hundred yards away, round an angle of the great building,
the hammers were still mutilating the peace of the night. As Gervase
and Anne stood to listen, not knowing what to do next and uncertain
of the way to go, since peril hemmed them in on every side, they were
greatly startled by a scrunch of feet on the gravel quite close to
them. There was a sudden drone of voices which told them that two men
were quickly approaching the spot on which they stood. Indeed they had
barely time to put out the light of the lantern and to crouch close
under the shadow of the huge wall of the prison before the men passed
them.

They came so near that they almost touched Anne and Gervase as they
knelt. They heard the men open the door through which they had just
come, and as it swung back, so close were Anne and Gervase to it that
it concealed them behind it.

The sudden flash of the light that one of the men carried was very
terrifying.

“Wake up, Nick.” The rough voice the other side of the door was so
loud in the ears of the fugitives that they held their breaths. “Wake
up, Nick.” They heard the man grunt as he gave a vigorous shake to the
turnkey, who was still snoring tremendously. “What a devil you are for
sleeping and drinking! Master Norris the headsman is here and would
have a few words with the condemned.”

A perfect tornado of shakes accompanied the words, which yielded
presently to a series of kicks. Evidently the business of arousing the
turnkey was to prove no light one.

“Wake, you drunken fool. Here is Master Norris the headsman, don’t you
hear? Are you going to keep us here all day?”

Hardly daring to draw breath, Anne and Gervase continued to kneel close
behind the open door. Their terror and their peril suddenly made Anne
desperate. Not daring to speak, she plucked her companion’s sleeve; and
then putting all to the touch and keeping close under the shadow of the
wall, she started to creep away on hands and knees from this position
of imminent danger. Even by the time they had made a distance of fifty
yards in this painful fashion, and had set a buttress of the Castle
between them and the open door, they could still hear the indignant
voice of him who had laid upon himself the task of rousing the sleeping
jailer.

They could breathe a little now. But their position was still one of
very great peril. The whole place seemed to be astir. Men and lights
were moving in all directions. Voices of soldiers, workmen and servants
of the Castle were all about them. As yet there was not a single fleck
of the dawn to be seen, but already the birds had begun their early
notes. Daybreak must be very near.

Not for an instant must they stay in the place they were now in. Even
as they knelt close by the wall they expected to hear the startled
outcry that would announce the escape of the condemned man.




CHAPTER VII


THEY had only one hope of getting free. By some means they must cross
the open courtyard, and creep round to the Castle gate before the
coming dawn had time to reveal them.

On hands and knees they made for the open. With no longer the shadow of
the Castle walls to conceal them, their peril was greatly increased.
More than once they stopped and lay full length on the ground, so near
they were to discovery. It seemed as if they would never be able to get
to the point they had fixed upon, which was the precarious shelter of a
few stunted shrubs growing near to the Castle gate.

It was a long while before they could reach that security. Not long
perhaps in point of fact but an age in experience. Each time they lay
down on the hard cobblestones to avoid some new danger they expected
the dread proclamation to ring in their ears. It seemed little short of
a miracle, such was their exaggeration of events, that the escape was
not known already.

At last they were come to the place they sought, hard by the gate. And
here it was that the Providence which thus far had used them so well
seemed now to desert them. To their horror they realized that the east
was already light. The only hope of getting clear had been to slip
unseen through the gate at a moment it might chance to be open for the
admission of others. But from the first they had known that daylight
would make the risk too great to admit of any such expedient.

They must find some other way. Yet Anne well knew there was no
other way. The Castle was surrounded by walls it was impossible to
scale, except on the south side. Here the parapet was low, and for
a sufficient reason. Beyond the south wall the Castle rock ended
abruptly. A terrible chasm, hundreds of feet in depth, lurked beneath.

They had soon decided that the gate could not avail them now. Thus they
crept away to the left in the direction of the south wall, taking cover
as they went beneath a row of laurel-bushes. But no sooner had they
reached the wall than they saw, even in the gray twilight, that it was
certain death to climb it and hazard a descent of the sheer precipice
on the farther side. What could they do? Every moment it was growing
lighter.

By now Gervase had shaken off his lethargy. One who has lain weeks in
a prison and has composed himself for death can hardly be expected to
take occasion by the hand. But the fine and keen air of the morning and
the almost miraculous chance of life that had been given him had done
much to restore his numbed faculties. A resolve had already been born
in his heart to sell his life very dearly. In the last resort he was
determined to attempt the almost impassable face of the cliff.

But there was his brave companion. She seemed to read his mind. And
reading it she summoned the courage of despair. “If there is no other
way we will crawl down the rock,” she said.

“It would be death, mistress.”

The clear eyes that were so unafraid shone like stars through the gray
light. “I do not fear death,” she said in a low voice. “Rather death
than the whip or a dungeon underground.”

Dismally he realized that there was no answer to this argument. “We
will go together, mistress, wherever it be--unless--” a deadly chill
corroded the young man’s veins--“I walk back to my prison.”

“No, no,” said his deliverer tensely. “Anything rather than that.”

Every minute it was growing lighter. They crouched under the scanty
cover of the laurel-bushes, not knowing which way to turn or what to
do. All their senses were strung to catch the alarm they were ever
expecting to hear. But the miracle still endured; the alarm was not yet
given. Yet it was impossible that it could be much longer delayed.

In despair they crept farther along the wall. They must choose a
place for the grisly descent, yet even as they looked far down over
the parapet of the wall they hardly knew how to face such a hideous
alternative.

“It is certain death for us both,” said Gervase. “It is better that I
returned to my prison if you are sure there is no other way of escape.”

“Do you fear the rock?” The firm voice was low and calm.

“For you I fear it, mistress.”

The starlike eyes pierced him with their light. “For myself,” said
Anne, “I fear only to be left alive.” Very deliberately she took the
dagger from her belt. “Wherever you go,” she said as she offered it by
the hilt, “I would have you plunge this into my heart rather than you
left me.”

His cold fingers trembled on the hilt of the dagger, but even as
they touched it he knew that such a deed was far beyond his present
strength. “Better the rock than that,” he said.

“Yes, better the rock.”

Such a steadfast courage was like wine in his veins. Suddenly he flung
his arms about her and folded her to him. One slow kiss was pressed
upon the upturned mouth. Certain death awaited them, and they were
young to die, but there was now no way of life. And at least by God’s
mercy they had known one high moment which paid for all.

It was the man’s part first to mount the parapet. Shuddering in every
vein, he began to climb up to it. He was not a coward, but the desire
of life was running desperately high. The girl followed close after
him. Her will was firmer than his because her imagination was less.

Gervase had nearly reached the coping of the low stone wall when Anne
caught at his heel and drew him down again. “See,” she cried. “Is not
that a hole in the ground along there by that farthest bush?”

“It may be so,” said the young man, fearing for his resolve. “But let
us not look back. If this were done let it be done now.”

But sudden resolution had come upon Anne. Or was it that resolution was
failing her? At least with this new and faint hope she was able to draw
Gervase from the wall. His will had been strung to meet the death he
feared with all his soul, but the passion of life in his pulses heeded
her call in spite of himself.

There was a void, it seemed, gaping in the ground behind the bushes
but a few yards off. But Gervase could scarce drag his body towards it
as they crept close by the wall to see what it might be. For now he
felt with a dull sense of terror that the great moment was past. His
insurgent nerves told him that not again in cold blood would he climb
to the parapet of the wall.

From this new errand he looked for no deliverance. But as soon as they
came near they saw that the void, barely visible in the gray light, was
a hole in the ground. It seemed to be a kind of cavern or deep passage
burrowing far down into the very bowels of the earth. As far as they
could discern it was provided with rude steps of stone, and the mouth
of the cavern was protected by an iron grating.

They did not wait upon one another’s word, but at once and together put
forth all their strength to remove this barrier. It was so heavy that
it scarcely yielded at first. But sheer desperation armed them, so that
at last they were able to move the grating sufficiently to permit first
one of their slender bodies and then the other to squeeze through the
narrow opening into the total darkness that lay beyond.

By the time they had descended three steps they could see nothing.
Absolute night yawned under their feet. The unknown, terrible and
immeasurable, began slowly to receive them. Whither they were going
they did not know. Where the cavern led, what they would find at the
end of it or what they were likely to encounter by the way were matters
about which it was vain to speculate. All that they knew was that
for the time being they were very precariously delivered from a more
instant peril.

It might be perhaps that they were going to a doom more terrible, since
the unknown is ever more sinister than the known. For aught they knew
the stone steps might carry them through that appalling darkness to the
verge of a deep well or some abyss that would shatter them in pieces as
surely as a fall from the rock itself.

Sheer desperation urging, however, they prepared to descend step by
step into the noisome earth. Gripping each other’s hand tightly, they
started very slowly to go down the steps. And now it was that they had
cause to regret bitterly that the lantern which had guided Anne to the
prison had been left under the Castle wall as being a thing that had
already served its turn. At this moment its help would have been beyond
price.

Holding each other by the hand, their hearts violently beating, they
yielded themselves to the care of Providence. The descent was sheer,
slow and terrifying. Bats, undisturbed for many a long year, began to
hover round them. They could not see anything; a foul miasma hardly
allowed them to breathe; each step they took was likely to be their
last, but not for a moment did they pause in their descent.

They were like a pair of twin souls in the avernus. The sense of
nameless fear enfolding them was awful, overmastering.

“Whither does it lead?” said Gervase at last, his whole being now in
revolt.

“I know not,” said his companion. “But so long as we are like this,
hand in hand together, there is surely no need to care what lies
ahead.”

Such an answer, spoken with the clear force of a noble resolution,
thrilled in his heart. The courage that was his by nature, which the
bitterness of his recent pass had overthrown, came back to him. If
death must come, let it come to them now as each held the hand of
the other. They began to move more quickly, and now with a sort of
recklessness, far down into the chasm that yawned darker and darker
below them. Minutes passed; step succeeded step, yet still they had not
come to the final one.

Would this descent never end? Would they never again see the light?
The desire to know what lay ahead grew so intense as to be almost
unendurable. This dreadful suspense through which they were passing was
neither more nor less than torture.

It began to seem certain that they would find themselves in some pit
or oubliette or forgotten dungeon underground. In that case there was
some hope of concealment, in which they might lie through the day. And
if their pursuers had not the wit to find them, when the darkness came
they might again ascend to the courtyard, and carry out their first
design of escaping through the Castle gate.

At last, after at least a full hour of this torture by hope, the steep,
narrow, winding stone stairs came suddenly to an end. It was impossible
to go farther ... a wall confronted them. It would appear that the
descent ended in a cul-de-sac. Before accepting this as a fact,
however, Gervase gave the wall a kick in order to attest its nature. To
his surprise he found it to be made of wood.

That fact served to tell him that here was not the natural end of
those strange stone stairs. Something lay beyond. Conceivably this wall
was a door. But so heavy was the darkness that it was impossible to
tell.

Gervase set to work with the dagger his companion had given him, in
order to see if he could not pierce this barrier and gain a clue to
these hidden mysteries. But the point of the weapon was delicate and
the wood was tough. It was impossible to make any progress. At last,
realizing the attempt was vain, in a kind of despair he hurled the
whole weight of his strong frame against the door in the faint hope
that it might yield.

Sometimes it happens that when a man has grown utterly desperate, an
inspired accident shows him the way! Gervase had looked for no result
from that reckless, despairing fling of his shoulders against that dark
wall, but to his surprise an odd creaking and cracking at once arose.
The wood was rotten with age. In the next instant, to the unspeakable
joy of Gervase and his companion, a faint worm of light came creeping
through a rent in a door.

Daylight lay beyond! So cruelly had their nerves been fretted by the
slow descent into cavernous darkness, that they could have cried out
for joy at the light. Together they hurled their strong young shoulders
against the door. Further rendings and tearings followed. Then came an
ominous crack, and there was a breach in the door wide enough for them
to pass through.

Their eyes were blinded by a flood of golden light. It was broad day,
and once again were they breathing the air of morning. But where were
they. They had come, it seemed, into a small paved yard. In front of
them was a wall and a line of low buildings. In the middle of the yard
was a large farmer’s wagon containing a number of sacks of corn. To
this vehicle a pair of horses was attached.

They crept very cautiously out of the door in the rock, and not then
until they had first made sure that the yard was empty.

“This is the yard of the Castle brewhouse,” said Anne. “There is a door
yonder which opens into a lane that runs down to the river.”

They ran swiftly across the yard, found the door unbarred, and at once
were free of the Castle precincts. They were now in a long, narrow
lane. It needed but a swift glance to tell them there was not a soul in
sight. Thereupon they took to their heels and started to run down the
lane for dear life.

It was more than a mile in length and it led straight to the river. It
was narrow, muddy and uneven, winding through swampy marshland over
all manner of rough ground. But in spite of the many difficulties it
presented they dashed so fiercely along the lane that it seemed as if
their hearts must burst.

Providence was with them still. All the way to the river they did
not meet a soul. Great as was their good fortune, it was yet less
remarkable than it appeared, since the path they had taken was a rude
cart-track rather than a road, with a tall hedge growing on either side.

At last the Trent in all its morning splendor lay before them. With
sides heaving and breath sobbing, they flung themselves beside it,
burying their faces in the icy grass.




CHAPTER VIII


SHUDDERING with fear and gasping for breath, they lay side by side,
their convulsed faces pressed into the grass. Such a nightmare of
terrors as they had endured had for a time overthrown them both
completely. But in their veins was youth, and very soon the courage it
gives began to renew them.

Yet, as thus they lay in the grass by the bank of the river, fighting
for the strength to go on, there was a grim sense already in each of
their hearts that they were no more than a pair of birds in a snare.
Not for an instant dare they consider how long they might hope to
elude pursuit. Perhaps it might be given to them to enjoy an hour of
freedom--if freedom it could be called with a desperate hue and cry
upon their heels--but it was by no means certain that even so much
grace as this would be vouchsafed.

They rose presently from the cool grass. Already their strength had
returned. It was still early morning, not more than seven o’clock
perhaps, but the day promised to be glorious. A trembling sheen, like a
curtain of finest gossamer, was falling from the face of the sun; the
mists were receding from the fast-flowing river. Cattle were lowing in
the fields; larks were singing in the upper air. Nature in all her
color and music, in all her pomp, variety and gladness, was spread
before them. Every brake was alive with the song of birds; from every
hedge and tree the tender green was bursting. How was it possible, amid
such a pageant of young life, for either of them to think of death?

A little chilled by the grass in which they had lain, they began again
to run by the side of the river. Like a pair of colts they shook
their limbs free. For a mile or more they ran their hardest in order
to get warm, and perhaps in order to outstrip the thought that held
their souls in thrall. On and on they ran. The sense of motion, of
untrammeled freedom in their pulses, was like a delicious madness now.
At last they stopped, feeling very hot and breathless, and bathed their
hands and faces in the river. Then they made the discovery that they
were desperately hungry.

Alas! there was no means at hand of staying their pangs. And even had
food been obtainable they would have been face to face with the fact
that they had not so much as a penny between them. The whole of their
worldly store consisted of the clothes in which they stood and a dagger
whose hilt was curiously wrought in silver. But these were slender
means enough to meet even the most pressing of their needs. Alas!
that Anne, in the obsession of her high resolve, had forgotten the
importance of putting a purse in her pocket.

It was a bitter discovery. Slowly and very surely the pangs of their
hunger were mounting, so that all too soon their spirits fell. Then
they sat on the grass and rested awhile and dabbled their wrists in the
cool water of the fast-flowing river. Thus they gained new strength
and were put in better heart. And as they now continued their strange
journey at a drooping pace, they walked hand in hand with a kind of
tragic tenderness.

In a little while, however, Providence again declared itself to them.

A sudden turn of the riverside path revealed a woman sitting under
a hedge milking a cow. Hand in hand, like a pair of children, they
approached her and humbly craved one drink apiece from her pail.

The woman was old and ill-seeming, with a very hard face, and there was
nothing about her to suggest that it was her nature to be generous.
But the strange request was made very politely. It was preferred in a
manner not unworthy of persons of condition, but in the shrewd eyes of
Mistress Poll Plackett their appearance had a grave lack of anything of
the kind.

The man was without a hat, his long fair hair was lank and undressed,
his clothes, though of a good sort, were covered with mud, and his
face might have had considerable beauty had it been less wild, less
pitifully haggard. As for his companion, good Mistress Plackett was
completely at a loss to say who and what she might be. In the first
place it was hard to determine her sex, let alone her degree. The shape
was all slenderness, all long-flanked delicacy; a profusion of charming
curls escaped in clusters from under her velvet cap; the face, full of
a rare and vivid beauty, was lit by two eyes that were like twin stars
of gray light. Yet she too was covered with mud and she bore a look of
wild distress. And far worse even than this, to Mistress Plackett’s
horror the nether limbs were clad in a pair of leather breeches.

Had it not been for this unlucky garment their good looks and good
manners might have melted the heart of a prudent housewife and fearless
Christian. But such a strange style of dress was a sore tax upon her
forbearance.

“I don’t know what to say, and that’s the truth,” said Mistress
Plackett very doubtfully indeed. “I don’t like the looks o’ ye. Can ye
pay for a little drink apiece?”

“By my faith no,” said Gervase, with perfect honesty. “We cannot
do that, good dame. But give us even a very little draught of your
delicious milk and we will bless the day that you were born.”

“I don’t doubt ye will,” said Mistress Plackett sourly, “if ye get a
drink for nix.”

Further scrutiny followed hard upon this unblushing confession of
absence of wherewithal. Moreover it seemed to confirm Mistress
Plackett’s unfavorable opinion.

“Do you see any green in this eye, young man?” said she. “And do you
suppose that Poll Plackett has passed three-score and five winters in
a hard world, and the same amount o’ summers to match ’em, not to have
better wisdom than to give away milk warm from the cow to a gallus pair
o’ strolling Egyptians?”

“Don’t be hard-hearted, mother, I pray you,” said the young man in his
beguiling speech. “If only you knew how hungry we are! Let us drink
only a very little of your delicious milk, and God will reward you.”

“Maybe, young man,” said Mistress Plackett, “and maybe He will reward
me doubly for the little ye take not. However, here is the pail. Have
a little drink, you Egyptian, for I am bound to say you have a very
good-looking face.”

“A thousand thanks,” said Gervase, eagerly seizing the milk-pail. “But
first may I offer it to--to my friend?”

“No, you may not,” said Mistress Plackett roundly.

“But why may I not, good mother? We will take but a very little apiece.”

But Mistress Plackett shook her head sternly. “Be your friend a man or
a woman?” she said.

“Can you not see that she is a young gentlewoman?”

“Od burn me if I can!” said Mistress Poll. “A young woman she may be,
but gentle she is not, to appear out of her sex. I will not have my
honest pail go near such a shameless thing. Let her keep off, else you
shall go wanting yourself.”

“But, good mother----”

“Let the young doxey keep off, I say. She shall not have a drop as I am
a virtuous woman. And if I did but know where to find Master Tippet the
thirdborough, she should be burned in the hand and whipped out o’ the
county o’ Derby.”

So shocked was Mistress Poll Plackett when she discovered the sex of
the second Egyptian, that the first, for all his beguiling speech, was
like to go hungry. Gervase and Anne were desperately keen-set, and they
very well knew that it was within their power to take the milk-pail
from the custody of this good lady, and to soften her protests by
applying the milking stool to her head. But fierce as their hunger was,
they yet hesitated to take such extreme measures. Still it was driving
them so hard as sorely to try their forbearance.

“The shameless hussy shall not touch a drop,” said Mistress Poll. “But
you seem a proper and decent and fair-spoken youth, and ye shall sup a
modest bellyful.”

“Not a drop will I touch until my sister has drunk,” said Gervase.

“Ye called her friend just now,” said Mistress Plackett grimly.

“Sister and friend,” said the young man, with a profound air. “He who
finds a friend in a sister has a sister for a friend.”

Gervase spoke with much gravity, as if this gem of philosophy was
worthy of the deepest consideration. He had already grasped the truth
that there are occasions in life when it matters little what is said
so long as it be well said. And in that age he would have been a
poor-witted fellow who having been bred as a scholar could not readily
assume the garb of wisdom.

Yet after all it may have been less Gervase Heriot’s whimsical
readiness that prevailed with the good wife than his charming voice,
his tall, fine person and his gracious, manly air. When all was said
this was no Egyptian. None of the tribe of lawless wanderers could have
shown such a delicacy of manners when hunger drove him hard.

“Ye can both drink your fill,” said Mistress Poll Plackett.

They needed no second invitation. Anne drank first of the warm,
delicious draught, that might have been ambrosia straight from heaven.
Then drank Gervase.

“Good mother,” he said as he gave back the pail, “two wayfardingers
will remember you in their prayers this night. And our prayers, alas!
must be your only guerdon. But from our hearts we thank you.”

Mistress Poll shook her head. “Let it be so,” she said gruffly.
“Although you can’t cut ice with thank you, still I don’t begrudge the
milk, young man. But my advice to you is this: when you come to a bush
give your young doxey a sound beating, that she may learn not to ape
her betters in such a shameless livery.”




CHAPTER IX


THEY gave good-day to Mistress Poll and passed on their way wonderfully
refreshed in body and spirit. Still they kept by the river. The sun was
now shining clear out of a pure and limpid heaven. Above and all about
the birds were singing. They could almost hear the sap running in the
trees; yellow daffodils shone in the grass; the little green buds were
bursting from brake and thicket. By now a wild sense of freedom was in
their veins and they had a great delight in the company of each other.
Yet behind all things--the glamour of the earth, the golden sky, the
grave majesty of nature--lay a dark, terrifying cloud.

Not for a moment could they forget that their lives hung by a thread.
They were ever looking back to see if their pursuers were yet in sight.
They raked each bush they came near to see if it held an enemy. At
every bend in the river they made ready to be sprung upon.

And, as they were soon to learn, there was only too much reason for
these fears. It happened that they had made another two miles or so
when they came to a tall hedgerow running at right angles to the river.
And Gervase, looking along it in his constant vigilance, saw to his
dismay a small party of mounted men, wearing the conspicuous scarlet
livery of Sir John Feversham. They were no more than fifty yards away,
and were coming slowly down the hedgerow on the other side, beating the
bushes as they came and examining them closely.

Providence for the moment was with Gervase and Anne. The height of the
hedge and an abrupt bend of the river served to hide them from view.
Instantly they took cover by flinging themselves full length in the
grass in which they stood. There was nothing else to be done; their
pursuers were so near that flight was impossible.

All that remained for them was the hope that they had not been seen
as yet, and that their pursuers would not come over to their place of
concealment. But as thus they lay close in dire suspense, they were not
aware of a more instant danger. Within a few yards of them, on their
own side of the hedge, a man with a dog was approaching.

As yet the man had not seen them, but alas! the dog had already
discovered them. It ran straight to where they lay concealed in the
grass, and to their horror began to fondle Anne and lick her face. In
the next moment a man on a horse was bending over them.

Thrusting the dog away from her, Anne looked up and saw the man, and as
she did so her heart died within her. It was John Markham the falconer.
His eyes were fixed upon the prostrate form of Gervase. In the very
fascination of terror she watched his hand stray to the hilt of his
dagger.

Both the fugitives lay in the grass staring up helplessly into the grim
eyes of the falconer. They could neither move, speak nor act. A chill
of horror was upon their souls. But the dog, Anne’s old friend and
companion, was overjoyed and continued to lick and fondle her.

Of a sudden John Markham’s hand forsook the hilt of his dagger. And in
the same instant his face changed from the tawny bloom of health to a
hue far otherwise. His rather slow brain had realized who it was that
lay by the side of the escaped prisoner.

The falconer grew white as death. He was the devoted servant of a good
and honored master. But beyond all things he was the slave of his
young mistress. All was mad turmoil at the Castle. As yet none had had
thought to spare for Mistress Anne. Her absence had not been noted,
perhaps not even by the Constable himself. All that was known was that
the condemned man had made his way out of his prison, in a manner
bordering upon the miraculous, within some two hours of the time fixed
for his execution.

Here was the explanation of the mystery! In a moment of harrowing
bitterness of soul John Markham read the terrible truth.

“Oh my mistress!” was wrung from his lips.

John Markham’s was a slow brain, but now his high devotion lent it
swiftness and subtlety. In that instant he had learned all. She whom
he had adored with a passionate fidelity had given everything that
was hers to one whom by all the terms of his honorable service he was
pledged to retake.

“Oh my mistress!” A tear sparkled upon the falconer’s cheek.

The fugitives lying in the grass made no reply. And in his anguish of
mind the falconer seemed as helpless as they. In the next moment came a
shout from the other side of the hedge.

“Hulloa, Markham, what have you there!”

The words broke the spell for the man who loved his young mistress
devotedly. “The dog seems to have found a rabbit,” was his answer.

“Naught better than that!” came in tones of disappointment. “We were
hoping he had found something else.”

The falconer called off the dog, and then immediately rode away to join
his companions.

Gervase and Anne lay in the grass until the Constable’s men were out
of sight. For the moment the danger was past. But they were possessed
by fear they could not overcome. More and more they marveled at
the singular Providence that held them in its care. Gervase had no
knowledge of the falconer; thus all that had happened was to him a
mystery. With Anne it was otherwise. Yet over and above a feeling of
gratitude for the man’s fidelity was the sting of remorse and a sharp
pang of regret for the glad, glorious and free life of yesterday.

Less than a week had gone since she had last ridden in the fields with
the falconer, mounted on her blood horse Cytherea, with her pied merlin
upon her fist. Since then the whole of life had changed. There had
come the terrible breaking of the imperious will, which after all was
not more than the will of a woman. And hard upon that, and doubtless
because of it, there had come this wild and complete surrender to the
impulse of pity which had banished her completely and forever from the
world in which she had dwelt.

Long after John Markham and his companions had passed out of sight she
lay in the grass sobbing hysterically. Such a wild storm of tears came
upon her as seemed to shake the slender form in pieces. And Gervase was
powerless to comfort her.

After a time her pitiful distress abated, and then they found the
courage to go on. For some miles they followed the river, yet with a
redoubled wariness. Their adventure had shaken them terribly. They did
not know which way to go or what to do. They wandered aimlessly, but
with every sense a-stretch and with terror gnawing at their hearts.
Soon they were hungry again, yet they had not so much as a penny with
which to buy food. Their spirits drooped. The April sun was still
shining out of a clear sky, the birds were still singing gaily from
every bush, the carpet of spring flowers was still spread vividly
before them, but the world was now a different place.

At noon they saw a village in the distance away to the right. It was
perilous to enter it, but hunger drove them hard. Thus they turned
their steps towards it in the hope that by some good chance they might
obtain a little food.

The village proved to be a rather large one. And in the middle of the
main street was the shop of a baker. They felt they were taking their
lives in their hands by showing themselves in a public place, since
they had had such clear evidence that the hue and cry was upon their
heels, but the pangs of hunger rendered them desperate.

Happily the baker seemed to dwell in complete ignorance of the recent
happenings at Nottingham Castle, which to be sure was fifteen miles
away. But in another respect the fugitives were less fortunate. The man
of flour proved to be a very shrewd and surly fellow.

He would only part with one of his loaves, even a stale one, on the
express condition that it was paid for in current coin of the realm.
Would he accept a dagger with a hilt wrought curiously in silver in
exchange for twenty pieces of that precious metal? No, he would
not. Would he for ten? No, he would not. He had no use for a dagger,
silver-hilted or otherwise. The only thing he had a use for was an
honest true penny when it came to a matter of a quartern loaf.

All Gervase’s persuasiveness could do nothing with this sturdy Saxon.
One of his quartern loaves was worth a penny, as had been those of his
father before him; a penny was its price in the open market, and he
would defy the devil himself to get one for less. In such circumstances
there was nothing for Anne and Gervase to do but to return bitterly
hungry to the village street.

They feared to show themselves in it, but alas; the spur of hunger
is a most instant thing. Sad indeed and footsore already with their
wandering, they walked through the village. Both were tired and thirsty
and also faint for lack of food. They kept close under the houses,
expecting at any moment to be sprung upon by the men in the scarlet
livery.

In the middle of the road, coming slowly towards them, was a ragged
nut-brown vagabond playing a flageolet for pence. He was very far
from being a skilful performer. Indeed his tunes upon his cracked
instrument were as ragged as himself. But apparently they did not lack
the approval of the public. For while Gervase and Anne stood looking
wistfully at this draggle-tail, a well-dressed man riding a good horse
tossed the fellow a coin as he passed.

Adversity is a great thing for the mind. Gervase at once took the
idea that he himself could perform quite as villainously if only he
could come by an instrument. If only he might barter the silver-hilted
dagger for a flageolet, even of the most lamentable kind, it might be
possible in the present condition of the public taste to keep body and
soul together.

He gave the idea to Anne, who approved it heartily, always assuming
that he had some little skill upon the instrument.

“Why, yes,” said Gervase. “I learned to play on the flageolet when I
was at Paris. ’Tis the only thing I learned there; at least it is the
only thing I learned there that is likely to serve us now.”

But how were they to come by such a thing? That was a problem indeed.
Under the spur of their necessity they went after the ragged fellow
and were fain to interrupt him in the midst of his discoursing of the
infamous melody of “Jumping Joan.”

He did not thank them for their interruption.

“Barter my pipe for a silver-hilted dagger, quotha? I would not barter
my pipe for all the pearls in the head o’ the Virgin Queen. Stand out
o’ my light and let me proceed.”

He was a rude fellow and a fierce one, and he was like to stride over
them in his haste to get clear of the suggestion.

“Barter my pipe!” they could hear him mutter as he passed down the
road. It was as though he had been asked to barter his religion. He
poured out a string of curses and then returned to his villainous
melody.

Feeling almost desperate, they dragged themselves along the street
until they came to a door with a bush hanging over it which showed
it was the village ale-house. Here on a bench outside the door they
flung themselves down. The seat was hard and narrow, yet infinitely
delicious to their weariness.

Here they sat until the landlord came to them. They marked his
appearance with great trepidation as to what manner of a man he was.
Like that of the baker, his aspect was large and stubborn but not
genial.

“I give you good morrow, Master Innkeeper,” said Gervase in his frank
and pleasant fashion.

“Good morrow to you, young man,” said the innkeeper cautiously.

“Do you care to buy a dagger with a hilt wrought curiously in silver?”

“That I do not,” said the innkeeper; “I would not care to buy anything
except a halter for my wife.”

“What will it profit your wife,” asked Gervase, “if you provide her
with a halter? You are not going to hang her, I hope.”

“Hang her! God bless me, no! It is simply that to-morrow I am going
to lead her in her shift with a halter round her neck as far as Derby
market-place and sell her to the highest bidder. Happen, young man, you
don’t want a wife yourself?”

“What is the price you ask for her?”

“A gold angel will buy her, and she’s worth double the money.”

“But why do you part with her? Has she a fault in her temper, or is it
that she is not as virtuously given as she might be?”

“No, her temper is excellent; and as for her virtue, the vicar of the
parish will answer for that.”

“Then in that case,” said Gervase, “a gold angel seems little enough to
pay for her.”

“Yes, she’s a great bargain,” said the innkeeper; “you can make your
mind easy, young man, on that score.”

“One might take her for a month on trial, I suppose?” said Gervase.

“No,” said the landlord decisively; “if you decide to have her you must
pay your gold angel and take her off my hands at once. But as I say,
you will have a bargain. Her virtue and her temper are excellent, and
if you remind her what a rope’s end feels like at every new moon I’ll
warrant that you’ll have no trouble with her at all.”

“Well, I hope she can cook a meal,” said Gervase. “It is an excellent
thing in a woman if she is able to cook a meal.”

“I’ll answer for her cooking, young man. You couldn’t find a better
hand at that sort of thing if you tried all over the county o’ Derby.”

“Skilled in making bread?”

“Bless my soul, yes!”

“And in making cheese, I hope?”

“Ask Master Radlett the bailiff what he thinks of her cream cheeses.”

“Can she brew ale?”

“Aye, and cider too and also perry.”

“Well, she’s a paragon, I’m bound to admit.”

“Aye, she’s a nonesuch, there’s not the least doubt about that,” said
the innkeeper. “Her bread and her cider are things to remember.”

“Things to dream upon, in fact?”

“Yes, young man; and if you doubt me you had better try them for
yourself.”

Now it was here that Gervase affected a lordly indifference, a lofty
disdain. “Well, Master Innkeeper, I don’t mind very much if I do,” he
said, and his air was almost one of condescension.

“You shall do so young man,” said the innkeeper proudly.

And in an exceedingly loud voice he addressed some unseen presence
within the precincts of the inn kitchen. “Marian, bring out at once one
of your newest and largest loaves for a young gentleman in a tarnished
doublet of black velvet.”

“You have forgotten the cider,” said Gervase, with an air of profound
indifference. “A large pot would be the best, I think.”

“Also a full pint pot o’ your last year’s cider, Marian.”

“And perhaps a little of the cream cheese would not be amiss in the
circumstances. It is wise as a rule to make quite sure in a matter of
this kind.”

“That’s true,” said the innkeeper heartily. “There is nothing betwixt
here and Derby that can hold a candle to her cream cheese. Bring out a
ripe cream cheese, Marian.”

Anne began to tremble with excitement at the mere mention of these
viands, but Gervase sat as cool and collected as any man could have
done in the circumstances.

Presently a crone about seventy years of age brought forth a loaf of
bread, a cheese and a jug of cider. She laid them on the bench by the
side of Gervase.

With much deliberation the young man broke the bread in half and
divided the cheese into two portions with his dagger. He handed
one share to his companion solemnly. “I ought to tell you, Master
Innkeeper,” Gervase explained, “that my sister here is about as good a
judge of food as there is to be found in the Midland Counties. Tell me
what you think of the cheese, my dear Philomela?”

It was as much as ever Anne could do not to appear ravenous. “I think
the cheese is splendid,” she said.

“Ha! I knew it would be so!” said the landlord. “And what do you think
o’ the bread and the cider, you pretty young doxey?”

“I have never tasted anything like them,” said Anne.

“Ha! I knew it would be so!” said the landlord, with an air of pride
that was wonderful.




CHAPTER X


BY reason of this odd adventure Anne and Gervase were in good heart all
the afternoon. Providence had surely taken them in its care. Food was
not plenty, their feet were getting very sore, their enemies might be
upon them at the next turn in the road, they knew not where that night
to lay their heads; but trudging ever side by side in the company of
each other they had the spirit of youth to bear them on.

Again they took to the winding river-bank. It was kindlier traveling
that way. The springing green turf was far easier than the hard stones
of the road. Also the dust was less and there were fewer people to
avoid.

Towards evening poor Anne began to limp rather sorely. But not a word
of complaint passed those resolute lips. Gervase too was in sad case.
Full many a weary mile had they made since their wild setting forth in
the dawn of the April morning.

Several times in the late afternoon they were obliged to sit by the
river and seek some little ease by taking off their shoes and stockings
and by bathing their aching feet in the cool water. But their courage
was wonderfully high, for youth was with them, and also Providence,
and also a something rare and strange which each had kindled in the
other’s heart.

The mists of evening began to steal down the river. As the fugitives
sat on a green bank by the side of the water, their faces aglow with
the sunset, nature spoke to them with a new, a fuller, an intenser
meaning. Bird and beast, herb and tree were thrilling with life. And
yet as Gervase and Anne sat close together they felt a sense of their
tragic destiny overtaking them. The life of one, perhaps of both, was
forfeit. The dark shadow was ever in their minds. All thought of the
morrow must be put away.

The sun had left them now. Out of the dark valley, a little sinister
with its close-grown gloom of trees, through which the reaches of
the river wound, a faint wind came stealing. Very softly it caressed
the face of the water, making an effect of music, eerie, solemn, yet
enchanting.

Gervase knitted his brave companion to his heart. The flood-tide of
youth was surging in his veins. The sudden sense of possession, of high
comradeship gave him one of those rare moments to which the mind goes
back when it comes to ask whether life has been worth all that has
been paid for it in blood and tears. To this slender thing, so true,
so resolute, he owed the life which for the moment was raised to this
perilous height of ecstasy. In his arms he held this great gift of God
to man; but a voice spoke to the chivalrous heart of him that he must
hold it reverently.

One kiss on the lips he yielded and no more. He would have pressed
a thousand there, but let him not forget the awful tragedy of their
present hour. No consummation their love could ever know on earth.
He fixed an iron control upon his will. And yet.... Whatever held the
earthly morrow, were they not twin souls pledged to roam the starry
spaces of eternity together? In the surge of his passion he tore
himself suddenly from the warm embrace and rose wildly from the green
bank of earth.

The darkness came, and more weary miles they trudged, her cold hand
clasped in his still colder one. The night fell very chill and without
a single star. Soon they left the river and struck inland, through
hedges and over swampy marshland, in the hope of finding a lodging for
the night more hospitable than the open country.

Of food there was little prospect. But under Providence, which during
the whole of that long and terrible day had been so kind to them, they
might hope to find shelter in a cow-hovel, or a shepherd’s hut, or at
the worst a dry ditch. And at last, when they had grown so faint with
hunger and fatigue that they knew not how they could go another mile,
Providence was moved again to pity them.

Suddenly they came upon the dark bulk of a line of farm-buildings just
ahead of them. A little groping brought them to a gate which led to a
stackyard. By now the moon was showing, and with the aid of her fitful
light they were able to find a stable. Here was a ladder which led to
a hay-loft; and in spite of the darkness they made their way into it,
whereupon to their unspeakable joy they found bundles of clean hay upon
which they could lie warm and snug until daybreak.

In utter weariness they burrowed under the hay like moles, and very
soon their cares were laid aside in as sound a sleep as they had ever
known. When they awoke daylight was stealing in through the chinks in
the roof. It was still very early, to judge by the absence of sounds
from below.

The abundance of the hay had kept them wonderfully warm during the
night, and now they shook their limbs free of it with a feeling of
refreshment and gratitude. But scarcely had they begun to move when
they felt a mighty need of food. Whatever befell, at all costs must
they seek some.

They came down from the loft and crossed the yard, first making sure,
however, that there was no one about. The morning was cold and misty.
Not far off was a byre, and a number of cows were in it ready for
milking.

Hunger was pressing them too hard to be put off with a scruple. Eagerly
they searched all about the farmyard for a pail, and at last were able
to find one in the stable out of which they had come. It was not very
clean, but the attentions of the farmyard pump soon made it fit for use.

However, when it came to a matter of milking the cows they discovered
but little skill at first. Gervase tried his hand with very poor
results. Anne then took a turn, and at last the pail began to fill.

She it was who drank first this nectar of the gods. Then followed
Gervase; then followed Anne again, and then again Gervase. Never in
their lives had they had so rare a breakfast. But so completely had
they been absorbed in their task that they had paid no heed to the
passing of the time, or to that which was going on around them. The
enjoyment of this illicit repast had taken more than an hour, and the
farmyard was now astir.

Of this fact they were soon made aware. Indeed their meal was scarce
at an end when a man’s shadow was thrown across the doorway of the
cowhouse, and there was the farmer standing looking at them.

He was a very powerful man, broad and heavy, and dressed in a suit of
russet leather. His hands were tucked in his jerkin and his chin was
sunk upon his breast as if he were wrapped in profound thought. The
look upon his face was not so much of anger as of amazement. “I trust ye
have had your fill?” he said at last, speaking in a slow, deep voice.

“That we have,” said Gervase heartily.

All the same he felt a kind of shame for having debauched himself so
freely upon another’s property. Yet it would be idle to deny that a
sense of well-being was uppermost in his mind at that moment. When all
was said, this feeling outweighed any that he might have had of moral
turpitude.

“Well, then, having had your fill,” said the farmer, speaking as one
who chooses his words, “you will not object perhaps to make payment?”

“That I cannot do, I am sorry to say,” said Gervase.

“It is just as I thought,” growled the farmer.

“I ask your pardon,” said Gervase, “for taking your milk, but we have
no money to pay for any food and we are starving.”

The face of the farmer was very ugly now. “Starving, are ye? Well, my
lad, ye shall both come with me to the constable.”

“I am sorry I cannot oblige you in that,” said Gervase. “I own I have
done you a wrong, but not such a wrong as to allow the law to mend it.”

“Well, my lad, you shall not go without payment of some kind,” said
the farmer, “and you can lay to that. Either step wi’ me to the
constable, or if you’d rather have it that way, come out into the yard
and have the properest thrashing you’ve had in all your born days.”

“Well, perhaps that is not unfair--if you can give it me.” Gervase
spoke with the modest readiness of a man of mettle.

“Oh, I’ll give it you right enough,” said the farmer, “and you can lay
to that.”

Certainly he was a most formidable-looking fellow, and he spoke with
a truculence sufficient to strike terror into all save the very stout
of heart. But Gervase, having slept soundly and breakfasted well, was
not inclined to quail. He stepped briskly into the yard at the farmer’s
behest. But there a rude shock awaited him.

“Diggory,” called the farmer to one of his hands at work in the yard,
“you just fetch my horsewhip along. Ask mistress to give it thee. Now
then, step lively.”

Gervase, however, proceeded to show cause why Diggory should not step
lively. “Oh no, you don’t, Master Giles,” he said to the farmer with a
laugh. “Pray don’t think I am going to take it that way.”

“Then what way are you going to take it, my lad?”

“Man to man with the bare knuckles if I take it at all.”

“Then by God you shall!” The farmer suddenly flung off his coat. “But
you don’t know what you are out for, young fellow. A bit o’ whipcord
will come a lot kinder to you than these ten commandments o’ mine.”

“I think I’ll risk that,” said Gervase modestly.

The farmer rolled up his sleeves, disclosing a pair of mighty arms.
“I’m the man,” he said, “who pretty nigh killed Job Nettle in the
fight at Lichfield twenty years ago. They talk about it to this day.
And I reckon, young fellow, I’ll pretty nigh kill you. There was never
none as could stand against Gideon Partlet as ever I heard tell of. Did
you, Diggory, ever hear o’ such?”

“Naw,” said Diggory, “naw, I niver.”

And the eyes of Diggory began to start in anticipation.




CHAPTER XI


CERTAINLY the farmer had the look of a bruiser. Moreover he had a
robust confidence in his own powers, and this was expressed by the grin
of satisfaction upon his face. A number of the farm hands soon came up,
attracted by the never-failing charms of a bout of fisticuffs.

Gervase followed the example of his adversary by discarding his doublet
and rolling up his shirt-sleeves. He was far slighter of build and cast
in a mold altogether more delicate than the farmer. Still he was a very
likely looking fellow.

As became a gentleman of his time, his education had been liberal.
Martial and manly exercises had played their part in it. Even in such
a simple affair as a set-to with fists he was not without instruction
from professors of the craft. Therefore he had a modest hope that he
would be able to take care of himself, even if his foe was a man of
greater power and experience.

Gervase gave Anne his doublet to hold. She, alas! was terribly
distressed when she saw what was going to happen. But there was no help
for it. If Gervase did not fight the farmer he must submit to the hands
of the law.

Her natural woman’s instinct was to run away and hide while the battle
was fought. But her staunchness forbade such a course. She mustered all
her resolution in order to remain where she was. Gervase might have
sore need of her help before he was through with a business so grievous.

Although the blows turned her sick, she forced herself to stand by the
wall of the cowhouse and with wildly beating heart watched the progress
of the fight. The might of the farmer’s arms was terrific. Happily he
was a man past fifty; he carried far more of flesh than when he was in
his prime as a fighter; and thus was Gervase given an opportunity to
ward or avoid the worst of his blows. Well it was for him that he was
able to do this, for in his prime, which was twenty-five years ago,
Gideon Partlet had been a famous fighter. Even now much of the old
skill remained; but the muscles were not so supple and he could not get
about as craftily as of yore.

All the same the farmer brought such a zest to his fighting, he
delivered such a rain of blows, and there was such a power behind them,
that had not Gervase been uncommonly quick with his hands and feet it
must have gone hard with him.

The farmer’s great fists would have dealt out terrible punishment had
the milk-stealer been unable to parry them. Even as it was, and in
spite of all that he could summon of youth, activity and skill, Gervase
did not get off scot free. To the huge delight of the farm hands who
were shouting loud encouragement to their master, the milk-stealer
received one blow on the side of the jaw that shook him terribly, while
another caught the young man on the nose and drew his blood. But this
was slight punishment compared with what might have been, for had
Gervase been wholly without experience he had paid heavy toll for his
felony.

Now Gervase was enough of a man to accept and perhaps even to desire
punishment for his offence. He could not help feeling that Master
Gideon Partlet had received a deep wrong at his hands, so that he felt
at first no very great animosity toward the farmer. But if the truth
must be told, the crack on the jaw shook considerably this chivalrous
desire to make payment in kind for his felony; the starting of the
blood rendered it in imminent danger; and when presently he was so hard
pressed that his right eye was like to be closed, the noble sense of
equity of which all men do well to be jealous, was thrown to the wind.

It seemed then to grow clear to the mind of Gervase that Master Gideon
Partlet somehow lacked a sense of proportion. The buffets on jaw and
nose were in his opinion quite as much as the milk was worth. The
assault on the right eye was usury. But the farmer did not share this
view. Once blooded, he fought more furiously than ever. Moreover he
accompanied each blow with a savage grunt and did all he knew to pin
the younger and lighter man against the wall of the byre.

The distress of poor Anne was dreadful. Brave as she was, after a few
moments she could endure the sight no more. Shuddering, she hid her
eyes in the doublet of her champion.

Would the fight never cease? She began to fear that the farmer would
kill Gervase. No longer dare she look at the cruel spectacle, but the
ever-recurring sound of the blows chilled and sickened her. At last
there came a loud cry from the onlookers, and then the dread sounds
ceased. When she ventured to look she made the discovery that a very
strange thing had happened.

The farmer was prone on his back in the mire of his own stackyard. He
lay motionless; and Gervase and one of the hands were bending over him
and were in the act of raising him up.

“Oh, is he dead?” gasped Anne.

“Not he,” said Gervase cheerfully. He besought her to bring a little
water from the pump in the milk-pail.

By the time this had been brought the farmer was sitting up rather
ruefully in the straw of the yard. Gervase supported him with a
shoulder; but soon finding that Gideon Partlet was little the worse for
the blow on the point of the jaw that had leveled him to mother earth,
the young man proceeded to clear the blood from his own face by dipping
it in the bucket.

The farmer watched the process with an air of grim approval. “Here’s my
hand, young man,” he said when Gervase’s countenance had been put in
some sort of order. “You are a lad of mettle and a pretty fighter. By
God, young fellow, I didn’t think ye kept such a clip as that in your
shirt.”

The farmer seemed to think it was the finest jest in the world that
one so wise and crafty as himself should have been careless enough to
lay himself open to such a blow. And, as became one who had enjoyed
many triumphs in his youth, he was too good a fellow not to be able to
laugh at his own expense. “Tell me, young man, where did ye learn that
buffet? A thing like that don’t come by nature.”

“I had it of Christopher Tattersall, the Yorkshire champion,” said
Gervase modestly.

“Did ye so?” said the farmer, with a kind of enthusiasm. “Well, it’s
the prettiest buffet I’ve smelt this thirty year.”

“I would not have used it had you not forced me to,” said Gervase.

“And if I’d known you were keeping it in your sleeve I’d not have held
ye so light, young fellow, and you can lay to that.”

The farmer spoke with a kind of grim admiration, as became an old
warrior who had dealt many a shrewd knock in his time. He bore no
malice, either for the rape of his milk or for the blow to his pride.
Besides, much was to be forgiven a lad of the true mettle.

“If you and your young doxey will step as far as the kitchen,” said he,
“perhaps the good wife can find ye a bite o’ breakfast apiece.”

In spite of the quantity of the new milk they had consumed Gervase and
Anne needed no second invitation.

The good wife, to be sure, viewed them at first with little in the way
of favor. Certainly neither was very reputable to look upon. Fragments
of straw and flakes of dried mud were clinging to their clothes, and
their faces had not met soap and water for many hours. Also the face of
Gervase was sadly swollen and discolored.

Still, in spite of the good wife’s misgivings she gave them a delicious
breakfast of collops, hot cakes and ale. Never in their lives had they
had such a repast. And the farmer, for all that they had stolen his
milk, was fain to heap up their platters with the large generosity of
one who has been a first-rate fighter in his youth.

“I know not who you be, young fellow,” said he. “You have an air of
quality, although you may be none the less a cutthroat for that.
Perhaps you are Tat Barcey, the gentleman prig. Still, I care not who
you are, but by God’s life you are a mighty pretty fighter. Wife, give
the young rogue another slice o’ the cake and give some more swipes to
the young doxey. Let it never be said that Gideon Partlet knows not how
to honor a stout and crafty fighter.”

Thus it was that an hour hence they went forth furnished royally. High
of heart, they took the road again. A night’s rest and a square meal
are wonder-working things. For a time they were no longer the hunted
fugitives of the previous day. Girt by the spirit of youth and braced
by good cheer, they struck across the country into the Derbyshire
woods. Here their path was spread with primroses and all manner of
spring delights. The bursting buds caressed their faces, the odor of
wild flowers was in their nostrils, a thousand golden-throated voices
filled their ears.

In the high-hearted freedom of the moment they forgot their tragic
peril. This was life in its rapture, life in its fulness. Soon Gervase
began to sing.

  In the merry month of May,
  In a morn by break of day,
  Forth I walked by the wood-side
  When as May was in his pride.

The green aisles re-echoed his voice. Presently they rested on a
moss-grown bank with the great river flowing far beneath them.

  There I spied all alone
  Phillida and Coridon.

They looked in the ardent eyes of one another utterly heedless of what
was to come. In this joyous morning of spring they were determined to
forget the horror that held them in thrall. Let the morrow bring what
it might, in this glorious hour they were determined to rejoice. For
the moment let the moment suffice! They would give themselves up to the
rapture of this little hour.

Why have a care? Their pursuers were outrun. They had the whole wide
world in which to hide--the whole wide world, which was full to the
brim with glorious adventure. They asked nothing beyond the comradeship
of each other. Let chance continue to serve them for their modest need.

For their luncheon they took a young turnip out of a field. But this
did not prove a very satisfying bill of fare. Alas! they soon began to
crave an ampler meal. Nor did this craving grow less when early in the
afternoon the sun went behind a cloud and presently a cool wind arose
accompanied by the threat of rain.

Turnips are doubtless excellent things, but they are little enough
upon which to maintain the fires of youth. Thus were they driven, at
whatever risk to their lives, to strike out again toward the haunts of
men. Again was Gervase consumed by a desire to barter the silver-hilted
dagger for a flageolet by means of which he reckoned to get pence, or
failing that, he hoped to turn the superfluous weapon into current coin
of the realm.

They passed through several hamlets, but in none did the opportunity
arise of fulfilling these desires. Moreover charity was lacking, so
that by sundown a bitter hunger took them in its grip. To add to their
woes they were again growing footsore and there had come a change in
the weather. The wind had a sting in it and the heavy gray clouds were
flying low.

Anne, however, was the bravest companion. She trudged along patiently
by the side of Gervase and nothing would make her admit that she was
hungry or weary or afraid. But had it not been for the solace of each
other’s company they must have given in long before they did. Each was
sustained by the other’s valor. Yet with night at hand, supperless and
without a roof for their heads, heaven knew what would befall them now.

At last, when the cold twilight had come down on the woods and fields,
they felt no longer able to go on. They rested awhile by the side of
the road. Gervase nestled Anne’s cheek against his coat, and it seemed
like ice.

“Poor soul,” he whispered, and could hardly restrain his tears.

It was quite dark by the time they had gathered the strength to
continue their journey. At first their limbs were so stiff that they
could hardly walk. But the bitter wind, the heavy darkness and the
threat of rain spurred them cruelly. Their strides grew shorter and
shorter, they fell sick at heart, yet they did not complain of one
another or of Providence.

On and on they trudged until they were like to drop. Exactly what they
hoped to find in that inhospitable night was more than they could have
told. Perhaps some hovel or shepherd’s hut or a byre with cows in it
was the bourne of their desire. But the weary miles passed by and none
of these things came to them.

After a time they turned from the hard and bleak high road, which gave
no protection from the merciless wind, again into the fields. They
felt now that they could not walk another mile. Utterly weary and
dispirited, they still clung to the slender hope of finding shelter
in a wood wherein to pass the remainder of the night. But the country
now was flat and cheerless. It contained little else than low-lying
marsh-land fringed with stunted willow-trees.

Disappointed of even this small crumb of solace, they crept at last
under a hedge which in the total darkness was the best protection they
could find. And grateful were they for it. At least they were saved
from the wind and rain. But fatigue galled them in every bone and they
were most bitterly hungry.

They were too miserable to think of sleep. For the sake of warmth they
lay very close together, but little enough there was of it that crept
into their veins. But never for a moment did their courage fail. They
were sustained with a sense of miraculous deliverance from infinite
perils. In body they were fainting, but in ardor of spirit they were
unconquered still. God who had given them so much would continue to
hold them in His care.

Almost as if in answer to their faith they saw suddenly a light
quite near. It seemed to be no more than a couple of fields away.
Yet again, tortured by hope, they painfully gathered their weariness
and dragged their worn-out bodies toward this fitful and unexpected
beacon. Alas! the two fields became four and yet the light seemed to
be no nearer. But once afoot in its quest, they stumbled on miserably
through the driving rain, in the teeth of the icy wind, over wet
furrows and through close-set hedges. On and on they stumbled, till at
last a moment came when they were like to fall in sheer fatigue. But
Providence was with them still. For in this last dire extremity they
were rewarded by the sight of that which they had come so far to find.




CHAPTER XII


THE light proved to be a fire which had been made by a band of gypsies
in a corner of a field. As Gervase and Anne approached, hope revived
them again, since a most exquisite scent of food began to pervade their
nostrils. Suspended above the fire was an enormous cauldron from which
this most delicious savor proceeded.

Gervase staggered toward a very ancient crone who was stirring the
contents of the cauldron with a long-handled iron spoon. “For love of
God, good mother,” he said, “give us leave to lie by your fire a bit.
And if we may have a share of your supper, by my soul we will remember
you in our prayers.”

The old woman looked at them both very doubtfully. “Who be ye?” she
asked suspiciously. “Whence come ye?”

“That I cannot tell you, mother,” said Gervase, and his tone was
pleading hard. “But we are a-cold and we are famishing. Do but grant us
this and you shall never have cause to rue your kindness.”

“Ye have the trick of fair speaking at any rate,” said the crone. “I
like the sound of your voice, young chal. Yes, you shall eat and lie by
the fire a bit.”

The contents of the pot proved to be not less delectable than the smell
that came out of it. The crone made free use of the large iron spoon
and gave Gervase and Anne each a huge platterful. They did not inquire
of what the savory mess consisted. It was enough that it was good.

While they ate thus dim figures emerged continually from the shadows
beyond the fire. Soon these were stretched before the pot and fell to
eating also. They were a rough, ill-kempt company. Their table manners
were none of the nicest. But they were a hearty, friendly, genial
people. They asked no questions of the guests who lay before their
fire, but rather seemed glad to find them there. Moreover they handed
about freely a flagon of excellent ale.

A dozen or more of these cheerful, dark-visaged wanderers were soon
about the fire. And after supper, as the night was still young, one
of their number produced a flageolet and began to play upon it not
unpleasantly. It was a well-toned instrument, far superior to the one
out of which the draggle-tailed wanderer of the village street had
wrung such doubtful music. Indeed Gervase, who had the ear of the true
amateur, was delighted with the whole performance.

He was fain to compliment the musician upon his melody. And in such
a wonderful manner had warmth and good cheer revived the young man’s
spirits, which less than an hour ago were at their lowest ebb, that now
he begged to be allowed to discourse a little on the gypsy’s pipe--a
request that was readily granted.

Now it chanced that Gervase, for all that he had a very humble estimate
of his own powers, had a certain skill in this, the most charming
of the arts. Upon a natural and refined taste was grafted years of
delighted study. Moreover the instrument was rather a choice one.

The gypsies had a real love of music; and when cunning strains began
to rise from their midst as they lay round the warm fire, they were
spell-bound. First Gervase played a soft, refined piece he had learned
in Italy. Its delicacy composed the ear even while it ravished it. Then
followed bolder harmonies, less exquisite perhaps, but none the less
delightful. Finally he passed into a couple of ranting pieces known and
admired over all the countryside.

When they heard these famous tunes some began to sing and others rose
and danced round the fire. They would not hear of Gervase ceasing to
play. For long enough was he kept at his task; all kinds of revelry
accompanied the cheerful strains of the pipe, and when at last the
accomplished musician was so weary that he could play no more it was
gravely whispered about the fire that this soft-spoken wanderer with
the wonderful gift was none other than Tat Barcey, the gentleman prig.

All went well that evening with Gervase and Anne. An almost
superstitious respect was paid to them. The old woman gave them a good
place beside the fire in which to pass the night, and when the morning
came they had another good meal.

The gypsies showed them so much kindness that they were in no hurry
to go forth. And before they left these friends, so heedful were they
of present opportunity, that two things of consequence befell. In
the first place a great desire had been kindled in Gervase to get
possession of the gypsy’s flute. Again was the dagger with the silver
hilt produced. Devoutly he hoped it would be deemed a full equivalent
for the thing he coveted.

The owner of the flute examined the weapon closely. Gervase’s heart
began to beat excitedly. At that moment he desired the flute beyond
anything else in the world. The value of the dagger tempted the gypsy
to make the exchange. “Why, yes,” said he, “certainly I will.”

When Gervase was given the pipe he felt a thrill of joy, for here was a
means of life.

But this was not the end of their good luck.

It was most necessary that Anne should disguise her sex at the first
opportunity. The hawking-breeches and long boots of untanned leather
surmounted by a woman’s bodice and feminine canopy of curls had already
excited remark. Therefore was the crone persuaded to cut off the long
tresses with a pair of shears, and out of the gypsies’ wardrobe she
provided a boy’s leather jerkin and a cap to match it in exchange for
the woman’s gear that Anne was wearing.

A great change was wrought thereby in her appearance. She was no more
a maid. Her thin, tall figure, graceful as a willow, did remarkably
well for that of a very slender boy. Charming she looked; her form was
of a singular delicacy, but it passed very well for that of a boy.
Awkward questions need no longer be feared along the road. Both were
now unmistakably of the sterner sex in the sight of all men.

They went forth in good heart. Armed with this blessed pipe no longer
need they fear for a modest sustenance by the way, unless they should
fall in with a singularly barren land or one notoriously averse from
music.

All the same they must use great caution. It had been proved to them
already that the chase was like to be hot at their heels. Still if they
kept to little frequented places, there was for the present a chance of
eluding their pursuers. But beyond that they did not dare to hope.




CHAPTER XIII


FROM this time forth, as far as it was possible, Gervase and Anne kept
to the woods and the fields. For several weeks they yielded themselves
to a free life in the open. Drenched by the rains, combed by the winds,
baked by the sun, they soon became as brown as berries.

All day would they wander hand in hand. But this was a state of things
that could not last. A clear conviction had grown up in the heart of
Gervase that a term had been set to his days. At any moment he might be
taken. Therefore would he have his taste of life.

He welcomed nature in all her moods. He basked in her sunlight, he
turned his face to her winds, he rejoiced when her sudden plumps of
rain drenched him to the skin. And the brave thing, ever beside him, to
whom he owed the life which was still his, she too in her courage and
devotion was in a mood of highest fortitude.

Come what might, they would live their hour. Already Anne had made a
vow that when the call came to Gervase she would obey it too. When that
dread hour came in which they could no longer put off their captors
they were resolved to die together. Soon or late a tragic fate must
overtake them. But in the meantime let them taste of life in its
abundance, let them rejoice in the ever-mounting passion of their love.

Often a barn or a byre sufficed for their night’s lodging, but they
seldom lacked food. Even in the most rural places Gervase’s skill upon
the flute, blended occasionally with the fresh and charming voice of
Anne, hardly ever failed to bring a few pence which served to buy them
a meal.

It was a good life and yet a very hard one. They dared not venture into
the larger places where pence might have been more plentiful. Thus for
the most part the fare was coarse and scanty, and often were their
bones a mass of aches from the unkindness of their couches. They were
tanned like gypsies, fine-drawn as greyhounds; and all too soon their
clothes began to display holes and tatters in spite of the care with
which they tended them.

Small wonder was it that as the days passed this severe life of the
road began to pall. Greatly as they exulted in their freedom, they
began to long intensely for gentler fare. Besides, they were inclined
to view their perils more lightly. Nerved by hardship, very hungry
and also grown a little desperate after a long succession of most
uncomfortable days and nights, they found themselves on a glorious
morning in the streets of the famous town of Oxford. And here a thing
befell that was to change the current of their lives.

It was hardly more than eight o’clock by the time they came into the
Cornmarket, where stood the Crown Tavern, which was the principal inn
in the city. The season was June, and young as was the day the sun was
already hot in a sky that was without a cloud.

A man dressed neatly in a doublet of black velvet, and with a short
cock’s feather in his hat, sat on a bench in the sun by the tavern
door. On his knees was a mass of papers which he was studying intently.
The expression upon his face was a little dubious at times, and more
than a little pensive at others. Now and again as he read he indulged
in a trick of brushing back his rather long hair with the palm of his
hand, and to this he had free recourse when he came to a passage in the
close-written folio that particularly engaged his attention.

As the strains of Gervase’s flute, mingled with the notes of Anne’s
rather plaintive treble, caught the man’s ear he paused suddenly in his
task. With an eager, inquiring eye that was singularly searching he
looked up; and as it fell upon the pair of vagabonds who were coming
slowly across the Cornmarket toward where he sat, there was something
in their aspect which seemed to arouse his curiosity. At any rate he
laid his papers down on the bench, and regarded the musician and the
singer with an air of great candor and interest.

It may have been that the performance on the flute struck him as
possessing a merit beyond the common, or it may have been that the
sweetly plaintive voice touched a chord in his heart, or again it
may have been that some subtle quality in the aspect of these ragged
robins spoke to him. For at least his scrutiny was grave, direct, very
regardful. It was as if he saw, beyond the tawny skins, the unkempt
locks, the tattered clothes, an underlying strangeness as of something
far other than was as yet revealed.

So oddly was this man taken by the appearance of these wanderers that
when they halted, rather timidly as it seemed, some twenty paces from
where he sat, he was fain to beckon to them to come nearer. Yes, here
were youth and grace indeed, and beneath their tan was an unmistakable
beauty. Very slowly and very gravely the man on the tavern bench looked
them up and down from top to toe.

“Playing for a breakfast, young sir?” he said in a tone of amused
friendliness, when at last this scrutiny was at an end.

“Yes, sir, we be,” said Gervase.

Of late the young man had affected a kind of Doric in his speech, the
better to accord with an appearance that grew more and more rustical.
But as soon as the man heard the tone of his voice a smile played
furtively upon his lips.

Again were those observing eyes directed upon Gervase and Anne. There
was neither unkindness nor impertinence in that whimsical gaze. It was
hardly more than the sympathetic curiosity of a subtle mind in the
presence of a mystery it is tempted to solve. But to Gervase at least
it brought a sense of discomfort. The man’s whole aspect made him feel
that here was a mental power, a faculty of divination far beyond the
common.

“My friend,” said the man, with a disarming air of courtesy, “if I may
say so, you perform so choicely upon the flute that you should seldom
go wanting a meal.”

“Ah, sir, we lack one sometimes,” said Gervase.

“There should be no occasion to do so this morning at least. Persons of
taste abound in this old university town.”

“That is good news, sir,” said Gervase guardedly.

“And had I been bred at this ancient seat of learning I myself might
have claimed to be of their number.” So soft and gentle was the tone of
the man’s voice that Gervase was set more than ever upon his guard.

The young man tried to show by a gesture that the conversation was
being carried above the plane on which his bucolic wits were accustomed
to move. But unhappily its very politeness defeated the object in
view. No rustic since the world began had ever been able to convey a
deprecation so delicate in a manner so urbane.

The man could not forbear to be amused. “Well, sir,” said he, “let me
make myself clearer. May I, as a humble lover of the arts, offer a
breakfast to you and your friend in order to celebrate your genius upon
the flute?”

“Certainly, sir, you may,” said Gervase, with grateful alacrity, and
casting all prudence to the wind.

The man bowed as if aware that an honor had been done him. “Is there
any particular dish, sir, you crave for your breakfast?”

Instead of replying to the question Gervase looked at Anne, as if
he desired that in a matter of such importance hers should be the
responsibility of choosing.

Quick to follow the glance, as he was quick to follow all things, the
man was fain to take it for his guide. “What do you desire for your
breakfast, young sir?” he said to Anne.

“A dish of sweetbreads, if it please you,” said Anne, without an
instant’s hesitation.

“The devil you do!” The man broke into a cry of laughter. “You eat
delicate, young sir. Is a dish of sweetbreads your usual fare of a
morning?”

“No,” said Anne. “But you asked me what I would like for my breakfast.”

“Well, young gypsy, you shall have ’em, confound me if you shall not,
if good Mistress Davenant can rise to such fare. I will go and inquire.”

The man gathered his papers, rose from the bench and entered the tavern.

Anne and Gervase were left on the threshold to speculate, perhaps a
little dubiously, upon this new turn in their fortunes. Gervase was
already spurring his memory to recall who this man might be. He had the
clearest recollection of having seen him before. But where he had seen
him and in what circumstances he could not remember just then. Still,
he felt not the least distrust of him. The countenance was subtle
enough, and wholly unlike that of any other man, but it had also a
frankness, a candor, a large geniality which wholly forbade the idea of
treachery.

Soon the man returned with a roguish light in his eye and the assurance
that Mistress Davenant would furnish a dish of sweetbreads in twenty
minutes.

These were glad tidings. Gervase rendered his thanks in his best Doric
and begged to be allowed the use of the pump in the courtyard of the
inn. Surely such a noble repast called for some amenity on the part of
those who would yield to its delights.




CHAPTER XIV


WHEN a few minutes later Gervase and Anne, as wholesome as the pump in
the courtyard could make them, were ushered by their new friend into
the breakfast parlor of the Crown, they learned without surprise that
his calling was that of a play-actor. Several of his colleagues were
seated at a long table that ran along the center of the room.

This man’s entrance with two nut-brown vagabonds, whose clothes were in
tatters and had the appearance of having been drawn through a hedge,
gave rise to not a little curiosity. And when he led them to a small
table spread for three persons that was set in an embrasure of the
window looking on to the street, and sat down to eat with them, covert
glances were stolen at so singular a spectacle by more than one member
of the Lord Chamberlain’s Company.

Still, even in that age there was a certain indulgence among the elect
for a man of acknowledged genius. And of such persons whom nature and
fortune had favored there was a number round the table in the center
of the room. At the foot of it, immediately opposite the vacant place
of his slightly eccentric co-manager, was Richard Burbage, who had
recently built the fine new playhouse on the Bankside in Southwark,
and who was held by all whose opinion was of weight to be the first
tragic actor of the time. Near to him was William Kemp, the famous
comedian, a burly, rubicund fellow, whose rolling, unctuous tones had
been nourished upon many an honest quart of sack. Farther along the
board were such excellent mimes as Taylor and Lowin and Heming and
Harrison, men highly accomplished in their calling, and of whom any
body of players had a right to be proud.

The Lord Chamberlain’s servants were on the floodside of success. At
this time they were going from strength to strength and outdistancing
all competitors. Even the Lord Admiral’s men had grown to envy
them. These were no unworthy rivals; men of wit and parts from the
universities were writing plays for them, but they had not the good
fortune to be inspired by a man of very brilliant and remarkable genius.

Richard Burbage’s co-director and part-proprietor of the new theater on
the Bankside was William Shakespeare, like all of these men an actor,
and perhaps a rather mediocre one. Yet wild horses would not have
dragged any such admission from his more accomplished brethren. For
these well knew that this man, whose air was so modest, so charming and
so friendly, was one whose own special gift was beyond all price. Times
and again, at the shortest notice, had he taken the lifeless corpse of
a forgotten play and with a few magic touches had made the dry bones
live.

More than once had Richard Burbage gone to him with a demand for
“something new for Twelfth Night.” And as sure as Burbage had done so
something new had been forthcoming; a piece such as to make the town
ring, and cause the Admiral’s men to bite their nails with envy. Plays
of all kinds, running through the whole gamut of the emotions, had
William Shakespeare devised. All sorts and conditions of men had been
enthralled by his remarkable talent.

“What new maggot has Will got in his brain?” inquired the famous Kemp
of the still more famous Burbage as he rolled a large and rather
bloodshot eye in the direction of the window.

“Nay,” said the tragedian, with an indulgent shake of the head, “I
know not, except that, as he would say, he is studying the great human
comedy.”

“Well, Dick,” said the comedian, “if you and I did not know that he had
rarer wit than any man alive we should think he was as mad as a March
hare.”

“It is a form of madness, friend William, that will never trouble you
and me,” said the tragedian, fetching a deep sigh in which there was
more than a suspicion of the idolater.

Richard Burbage in particular was sealed of the tribe. In those
reverent eyes the true prince had no peer. The tragedian was not only a
magnificent actor; he was also an uncommonly shrewd and practical man
of the world. He of all men was able to appraise the merit of William
Shakespeare. Burbage knew that his touch had an astonishing mastery.
He knew Shakespeare to be an incomparable craftsman who had already
furnished him with wonderful parts in which to display his own genius.
Moreover the tragedian firmly believed that this wonderful man carried
many another fine play as yet unborn in his brain.

It mattered not what the theme was. It might be as old as the moon or
it might be invented expressly for the Globe Theatre, but as soon as
William Shakespeare took the pen in his hand the realms of gold were
unlocked. An incommunicable thrill was given to the stale old plot; the
light that never was on sea or land glowed over it; every line acquired
a cadence, a fire, a magic that Richard Burbage, acknowledged monarch
of its interpreters, knew to be incomparable.

In the presence of the other members of the company, and particularly
in that of the younger ones, Burbage would often allude to the
playwright in terms of awe. His attitude of whimsical adoration was apt
to amuse his brethren not a little at times. Whenever the playwright
expressed an opinion on things and men--and an uncommonly shrewd one
it was as a rule--it could count invariably on the approval of Richard
Burbage. Furthermore all that he was moved to say or do had some high
sanction in the sight of the tragedian.

There might be those at that table less prone to idolatry. Some of
the younger men, having much to learn, were tempted to smile at the
spectacle of their chief sitting apart with a pair of nondescript
vagabonds, who to judge by their clothes were no more than a couple of
strolling Egyptians. But with Burbage and Kemp this was by no means an
occasion for levity. Their implicit faith in their colleague enabled
them to see method in his madness.

“Another of his discoveries, I trow, Dick,” said William Kemp, with a
sly glance in the direction of the window.

“You can lay your sweet life upon that,” said the tragedian, fixing
a stern eye upon a somewhat froward junior a little farther down the
table. “Do you mind how he found Edgcumbe and where he found him?”

“That I do, and Crosby too and Parflete also if it comes to that. There
is not a man in all England has such an eye for a youth of likelihood.”

Nor had this view to wait long for confirmation. Presently the
playwright rose from his seat by the window and came over to the long
table. There was an expression of keen pleasure upon his face. He laid
an affectionate hand upon Burbage’s shoulder. “Dick,” he said, “we are
in luck. I’ve found two of the prettiest boys I have seen this many
a moon. Well-mannered, gentle-spoke, right excellent in address. One
plays the flute in the manner of a musician; and the other is straight
and limber, soft-voiced and neat-legged. There is the making of such a
_Rosalind_ there as Parflete himself could not better. Give your old
nose one more dip i’ th’ tankard, Dickon, and then come over and pass
the time o’ the day with my dainty young Egyptians.”

The tragedian needed no second invitation, but with a
“There-what-did-I-tell-you!” expression of countenance accompanied
William Shakespeare to the table by the window.

“This is my friend Burbage,” said the playwright to the brown and
handsome Egyptians. “Not of much account as an actor, I am afraid, but
without a superior in the handling of a tankard with a toast in it or
in tossing off a cup of sack either before or after supper.”

Gervase and Anne rose from the table and bowed respectfully to the
tall, grave and dignified tragedian who yet had a subtle light of humor
in his eye.

Now the name of William Shakespeare was already familiar to Gervase. He
had heard his kinsman speak of him with high approval. Moreover Gervase
had sat on the stage at the theater and seen him perform in a number
of his own plays. To be sure he was nothing great as an actor, but
those who could judge of such things, his cousin Harry to wit, were of
opinion that he was without a peer as a deviser of plays.

But whatever the man was or whatever he was not, in the estimation
of Gervase he was undoubtedly a very agreeable follow. He had given
them a delightful breakfast. He had regaled them with free and lively
discourse. Also he had depicted the life of an actor--particularly of
one who had the good fortune to be taken into the Lord Chamberlain’s
Company--in most glowing colors. Nor had even this contented him. He
had ended by making them a formal offer to join that famous band.

They should have clothes of a good style and quality; their cheer
should be abundant; they should be comfortably housed and cared for;
and during the first year of their apprenticeship they should receive
a tester a day. The whole craft of the theater should be taught them;
they should tread the boards of the Globe; and, with due diligence,
upon a day they might hope to play before the Queen at Richmond or
Greenwich.

It was an alluring prospect that the actor had painted with a lively
and glowing fancy. And now that Burbage had seen these singularly
attractive youths and had learned that Shakespeare had set his heart
on securing them for the Lord Chamberlain’s Company, they had the
tragedian’s wiles of speech to combat.

Gervase was tempted sorely. The hard life of the road was growing
intolerable. Food was scarce, beds hard and often to seek; they were
continually exposed to the weather in all its inclemency; they were
haunted by a constant sense of peril. Should they exchange all this
discomfort for the happier prospect that was now dangled before them?

It was a grave problem and one that called for much hard thought.

“’Tis the finest profession in the world,” said the tragedian, with the
light of enthusiasm in his eyes, “and you, with your looks and address,
are bound to rise in it. Twenty years ago I was by trade a carpenter,
and as for Will here he was even less than that.”

It was not, however, the worldly advantages of a player’s calling that
were making their appeal to Gervase. No doubt they were considerable,
for both of these men had prosperity written upon them. It was not for
these things that he cared, however, nor overmuch for his own ease and
security. But for Anne, poor brave Anne who was already beginning to
fail from sheer fatigue, it would mean a far gentler way of life.

When, however, Gervase came to consider the alternative that was
offered he could not be blind to its perils. It was bound to mean a
life of publicity, in places moreover in which he was likely to be
known. No; the more thought he gave to the matter, the clearer his
conviction grew that it would add tenfold to their dangers if they
threw in their lot with the Lord Chamberlain’s men.

Gervase liked so well these honest, genial and courteous fellows and
the gay, free and pleasant life they offered that it went to his heart
that he could not answer in the way he would have chosen. What a boon
such a life would have been, what a relief from the hard road and the
open sky! Day by day their case was growing worse. But they must not
yield to these beguilements so long as they set any value on their
lives.

It was with much reluctance that in the end Gervase informed the
players that he and his companion could not throw in their lot with the
Lord Chamberlain’s servants. They were sensible of the liberal offer
that had been made to them; they expressed all proper gratitude for it,
but their business lay otherwhere.

The playwright in particular was much disappointed. Already he had
begun to count upon a couple of most promising recruits. The shy grace,
the light-flanked slenderness of the younger gypsy had especially
intrigued that perceiving eye. But it was in vain that Shakespeare
pointed out the advantages such a mode of life afforded over their
present one. It was in vain that he assembled all the glowing colors of
his fancy to depict it.

“I would, sir, that we might do as you wish,” said Gervase, with a deep
sigh.

The keen-witted player was quick to notice the wistful tone of the
voice, the look of pain in the eyes. All at once it came into his mind
that this young man was not what he appeared to be.

Surely he had seen this young man before. For the life of him he could
not then say when it was or where, but he had not the least doubt that
he had met him in very different circumstances. Yet his delicacy of
mind was such that the knowledge that he had come to the threshold of a
mystery made him less insistent than he would have been otherwise.

Presently with many sincere expressions of gratitude Anne and
Gervase took the road again. As Shakespeare watched them depart his
professional feelings got the better of him. “Dick,” he said to his
faithful henchman, “I am sore to see them go. No two such springalds as
those, so fair, sweet and likely, have I seen for a month o’ Sundays.”

“It may be so,” said Richard Burbage sagely.

“Still, things are not always what they seem, Dickon,” said the
playwright.

“How mean you, you old wiseacre?” The tragedian linked his arm
affectionately within that of his friend. “What new hare is started in
that wild demesne which you are pleased to call your mind?”

“I mean, dear shrew, that those are no more gypsies than Richard
Burbage is Emperor of Cathay.”

“Then who the plague be they?”

“Ha! you have me there. But I’ll wager there is far more in this matter
than meets the eye.”

“So be it, then,” said the tragedian, rolling his rich voice. “But
in the meantime let us see if a large cup of sack will sharpen your
recollection, you subtle-minded maker of plays.”




CHAPTER XV


ALAS! a large cup of sack did little to sharpen the remembrance of Mr.
William Shakespeare. It was in vain that he brought his mind to bear
upon the problem that now engaged it. He felt sure he had seen both the
gypsies before, and in very different circumstances; slight threads of
recollection were alive in his memory, but for the life of him he could
not piece them together into any hopeful clue.

The playwright spent the rest of the morning on a bench in the sun
before the door of the Crown, conning diligently the close-written
sheets of the latest heir of his invention.

Art is long, time fleeting. He read with mingled feelings: relief that
the thing was done at last; regret of the true artist that it was
not to be done all over again, so far it was from those first blithe
runnings of the fancy which had peopled his mind with such glad shapes
as no eye of mortal could ever look upon. Even now it wanted a title,
this pleasant conceited comedy. And how was it possible to find a
name for this absurd, sweetly foolish fantasy of the greenwood and a
banished duke, of love and girlhood and high poesy?

Art is long, time fleeting. It was a poor thing, but it would have
to serve, since the Queen had called for it to be played before her
next Thursday se’nnight in her palace at Richmond. And it made the
playwright sigh to think that there was only young Parflete to play
_Rosalind_, that fair emblem of victorious girlhood, upon which he
had feasted and quickened his imagination. The prosperity of the play
depended on a single character, and Parflete, with all his grace and
talent, came not near the poet’s ideal of the part. Perhaps no mortal
youth could ever hope to do that, and yet what a glorious _Rosalind_
had walked up that street but an hour ago!

It was a stroke of perverse fate that his eyes had been ravished by
that charming gypsy boy. But for that sight, Parflete, for whom the
part had been designed from the first, would have contented him. But
now having seen the true _Rosalind_, for all that he was so fine-drawn
and shy, so ill-kempt and rustical, it made the poet sad to think of
Parflete in the rôle, youth of breeding and talent as he was.

The playwright sighed heavily as he turned the last page. Alas! he felt
already that he had leaned too heavily on his chief female character.
Oh, if--! But such a speculation was idle ... he must dismiss it. Let
him spend his mind more profitably in seeking a name for the plaguy
piece. But how was it possible to find a name for such a patched coat
of fantasy?

While William Shakespeare was in this mental travail, his friend
Richard Burbage came out of the tavern. “Dick,” said he, “of your
charity give me a name for this curst piece. I know no more what to
christen it than does a blind tinker his dog.”

Richard Burbage removed from his mouth his pipe of tobacco,
a fashionable action which seemed to call for a slight air of
magniloqence. “A name, my William, for the curst piece?” The tragedian
shrugged his shoulders and spread his hands nonchalantly, while the
light of a large good-humor shone in his shrewd face. “Oh, call it as
you like it or what you will.”

The fist of the playwright descended upon the bench in front of him.
“Dick, you’ve hit it at the first shot!” he cried. “As You Like
It!--you’ve hit the target right in the middle.”

“Why take two bites at a cherry, my son?” said the tragedian, with
another amused shrug. “In fact, the matter merely amounts to this: If
William Shakespeare of Stratford-on-Avon in Warwickshire, would engage
one Richard Burbage, an honest good fellow, to write his plaguy pieces
for him, it would save him a vast deal of trouble and inconvenience and
the world would never be able to tell the difference.”

Thereupon Mr. Richard Burbage sauntered back into the Crown Tavern with
that large air of benevolent tolerance which should be the attitude of
a superior mind toward all men and all things.

“As You Like It,” said the playwright. “The name is as good as a
better, confound me if it is not!”

He dipped his quill into the horn of ink that was on the bench beside
him, and, with the never-failing instinct of the true craftsman, wrote
the title on the first page of his new comedy.

Scarce had he time to do this, however, when that swift, alert and
curious mind was engaged by an entirely new affair. There was the sound
of a horse’s hoofs on the cobbles leading to the tavern door. And the
playwright’s quick uplooking glance was met by the sight of a singular
traveler.

The newcomer was a man about twenty-five years old, riding a
useful-looking horse. But that which particularly drew the notice of
William Shakespeare was the hapless plight of man and beast. Both were
greatly distressed. The horse had evidently traveled far and swiftly:
it was caked with mud up to its withers; it was lame of a foreleg; it
was covered with sweat, and seemed hardly able to do another yard.

The case of the rider was in keeping with the horse’s unhappy state.
The man looked so limp and wretched that he could scarce sit in the
saddle. Moreover, he was wild-eyed and haggard; and his leather
riding-suit which seemed to denote a servant of a superior sort was in
sad disorder.

The man rode into the courtyard of the inn and handed over his weary
horse to an ostler. Then the rider, no less weary than his steed,
staggered painfully to the inn door. In a hoarse voice he called for
a tankard of ale and then flung himself heavily on the bench near to
where the player sat.

Shakespeare eyed the traveler with deep curiosity. The man was in such
a sorry plight that he could not refrain from pitying him. “You appear
to have traveled far, friend,” he said.

The man looked at the speaker in a manner to suggest that he might be
strongly averse from the delights of promiscuous conversation with a
total stranger. “Yes, I have traveled far,” he said, with a weary sigh.

He buried his head in his hands as if he were in despair. And even
after refreshment had been brought to him he did not heed it, but
continued in this attitude for some little time. Then suddenly he shook
off his lethargy and drank the ale. Feeling a little renewed, he called
for a second tankard.

“You don’t happen to have seen a couple o’ young gypsies traveling
through Oxford?” he asked suddenly.

Immediately the player grew very alert. “What kind of gypsies do you
mean?” he asked in a casual but wary tone.

“The taller of the two might be playing on the flute, I reckon, and the
younger one, who has the voice and look of a girl, might doubtless be
singing.”

William Shakespeare, as became a thoroughgoing man of the world, was
far too acute to blurt out on the spur of the moment the full measure
of his information. Rather he preferred to parry the question of this
singular traveler by putting a few of his own. “What might you be
wanting with them?” he asked cautiously.

The traveler drank copiously of his second pot of ale before he
answered. And when answer he did it was in the rather surly manner
of one who strongly desires to keep his own counsel and yet is not
well enough trained in the art of politeness to be able to keep it
gracefully. “That’s my affair,” he said bluntly.

The player was too wise a man to pursue his inquiry at the moment. But
by now his curiosity was fully engaged. There was a mystery here. And
mystery of any sort was apt to engage that subtle mind. When he had
first set eyes on that picturesque pair of young vagabonds he had been
strongly inclined to believe that they were other than they seemed. Now
this man’s coming, his agitation and his secrecy confirmed him in that
theory.

Clearly there was a good deal more in this matter than met the eye. The
player was convinced that he had seen both these ragged robbins before.
And in some vague way he felt he had seen them in circumstances and
surroundings wholly different from those in which they were at present.

He knew how to keep his own counsel, however. It was left to the
traveler himself to renew the topic. And this the man presently did,
and in the manner of one who against his natural judgment is driven by
some remorseless, some irresistible force.

“Did you say you _had_ seen a pair o’ gypsies pass along the road?” he
asked.

“I say neither that I have nor that I have not,” said the player.
“Still, if you care to tell me more it is possible that I may be able
to help you. But,” he added, with well-assumed indifference, “after
all, it is hardly likely that the persons I have in mind are those whom
you are seeking.”

The man hesitated as one impaled on the horns of a dilemma. Evidently
he was very loath to tell all he knew. Yet at the same time he realized
that the information he sought could only be won by a measure of
frankness on his own part. After a careful weighing of the pros and
cons of the matter he seemed reluctantly to conclude that his silence
might lose him more than it would gain.

“I know not who you are,” he said at last. “But you have a fair-seeming
air and the face of an honest man. And God send you are all of what
you appear, for it is a very strange and grievous story that I have to
tell.”

The traveler spoke in the manner of one who is entirely desperate. He
seemed to have been driven to the limit of his mental as well as his
physical endurance.

In the face of the player was that beacon of true sympathy which is as
a talisman in the sight of all men. He had the power to put himself in
the place of others. And here was a kindness, a candor, an openness for
all men to read, and reading for all men to trust implicitly.

“My story is one you will find very hard to believe,” said the young
man. “But there is no reason why it should not be told. It is in the
power of no man to make things in a worse coil than they are. And while
I do not think aught is to be gained by making others a party to them,
after all it can do no harm, and I may even gain a certain ease of
mind.”

The player showed very clearly that he was following every word with
the closest and most sympathetic attention.

“To begin at the beginning of my story,” said the young man, “my
name is John Markham. My calling is that of a falconer. I have been
eight years in the service of Sir John Feversham, who is Constable of
Nottingham Castle, and chief justice of the Forest of Sherwood. He has
the reputation of being a hard man. But I have always found him a very
just one. Moreover I say to you, whoever you be, that no man could
desire a better master.

“Well, to come at once to this dreadful story, which it hurts me to
tell, some months ago, six perhaps or more--at least it was in the
fall of the year--the Queen caused to be imprisoned privily in the
Castle a Mr. Gervase Heriot. He was a highly placed young man. But he
had mixed with the Papists, and after a trial which had been held in
secret before the Court of Star Chamber, he had been found guilty of
complicity in the Round House Plot, which you may know had for its
object the taking the Queen’s life. By a good providence the plot was
discovered in time, but the conspirators were able to fly the country,
except Mr. Heriot, who alone was taken.

“Mr. Heriot, as I say, was tried in secret, because the Queen’s
advisers were anxious not to inflame the public mind, and they wished
as little as possible to be made of so ugly a matter. Mr. Heriot was
proved guilty of conspiring against the life of the Queen, and he was
committed to the Castle of Nottingham to be held there by Sir John
Feversham, my master, until such time as her pleasure concerning him
should be further known.

“Some two months ago the Queen signed the warrant for Mr. Heriot’s
death. The day for the execution was fixed. And now I come to the
strange, the grievous, the incredible part of the story.” In the sudden
flood of his emotion the falconer’s voice almost failed. “On the very
morning that Mr. Heriot was to die by the ax on the block, within three
hours of the time appointed, he escaped from his durance.”

The young man could not go on. But the unspoken sympathy of his auditor
nerved him to continue. Yet as he did so a kind of tragic horror
entered his voice.

“At first nothing was known of the circumstances of Mr. Heriot’s
escape. Yet without loss of time all of us of the Constable’s household
who were able of body mounted our horses and rode off in all directions
in order that the prisoner might be retaken. And it fell to me as I
rode that same morning in the meadows beside the Trent to come upon Mr.
Heriot hiding in the grass.”

For a moment the unhappy young man covered his face with his hands.
It was as if he was wholly unable to proceed with his story or to
contemplate that which was coming.

With an ever-mounting interest William Shakespeare waited in silence
for this emotion to pass.

“I had but to speak,” the young man was able to continue at last. “I
had but to cry out to my comrades, who were less than fifty yards off,
and the prisoner would have been ta’en. But I did not do this.”

Again came a dire threat from an overwrought mind, but with a powerful
effort of will the falconer was able to proceed with his story.

“But I did not do this, for beside him in the grass was Mistress Anne
Feversham, the daughter of the Constable my master.”

A sharp cry broke from the lips of William Shakespeare. He rose from
the bench in the stress of his excitement.

“You let them go free!” said the player.

“Yes,” said the falconer. “I had it not in my heart to take them when
she, for whom I would have given my life, had given hers for the man
she loved better than her own soul.”

The face of the player was all melted with compassion. His eyes of
strange somberness grew fixed and dark.

“But this is not the end of what I have to tell,” said the falconer.
“I let Mr. Heriot and my young mistress go free; yet before that day
was out the truth came to the Constable my master, that it was his own
daughter who had contrived the prisoner’s escape and that she was away
with him over the country-side. And my master, being one to whom honor
is a jewel, posted at once to the Queen to her palace at Greenwich.
With his own lips he told her that Mr. Heriot was broken free. And not
a word did he speak of the part his daughter had borne in the affair,
but took the whole blame of the matter upon himself.

“They say that when Sir John told the news to the Queen her displeasure
was terrible. They say that his story--as in faith it must with the
chief part of it left out--carried so little credence to her mind that
she at once suspected him of treachery, old and loyal servant as he
was. She had him straightway committed to the Tower. He is to stand
immediate trial before the Court of the Star Chamber on a charge of
aiding and abetting the escape of a prisoner of state. And as I learn
from those best able to judge of such a grievous matter, my master,
unless the prisoner is retaken at once, will without a doubt be
condemned to the block.”

Shakespeare had followed with a growing excitement as strange a story
as he had ever heard in his life. There were elements in it which
appealed intensely to his dramatic sense. Besides, he did not doubt
that two of the chief actors in the tragedy were very close at hand. He
did not doubt that they were that fascinating pair of vagabonds who had
wrought upon his curiosity so short a time ago.




CHAPTER XVI


SELDOM had the mind of William Shakespeare been exercised more severely
than in this hour. No story could have been more poignant. Yet was it
the duty even of a true subject and of an honest man to confide to the
distraught John Markham his knowledge of the nearness of those whom he
sought?

Anxiously he considered this problem; but the more thought he gave to
it, the more baffling and complex seemed to be the difficulties it
presented.

Shakespeare talked long and earnestly with the falconer as they sat
out in the sun on the tavern bench. And the result of this intimate
conversation was that he came to form a high regard for the character
of this unhappy man.

The mind of the poor fellow was grievously tormented. On the one side
was worship of his young mistress; on the other his fealty to a good
and honored master. He was as one rent in twain. A high adoration had
divorced him from his duty, and now, in horror of an action that was to
cost his master his life, he was determined to do all that lay in his
power to repair his crime.

Up hill and down dale, in all weathers, at all hours of the day and
night, had he journeyed for more than a fortnight past. Far over the
country-side by little-frequented ways had he ridden in his quest of
the fugitives. Now did he hear of them from one of whom a few days
before they had obtained a night’s lodging; now from a masterless man
upon the road; now from a tribe of wandering gypsies; now from the
keeper of an alehouse. He was ever upon the point of coming up with
them, yet ever by the interposition of some strange providence had they
eluded him.

As Shakespeare listened to the tale of John Markham’s wanderings the
sore problem was ever posed before his mind. Should he discover to the
distraught falconer the whereabouts of the fugitives? Must he set him
upon the road they had taken but a brief two hours ago?

It was not at once that the player could come to a resolve. Indeed an
extension of time was unexpectedly granted to him, for as John Markham
sat on the bench in the sun a great fatigue suddenly overcame the young
man and he fell asleep.

Thereupon the player retired to the pleasant garden at the back of the
inn. Here he paced up and down the box-bordered paths with his hands
tucked deep in his doublet.

To him presently came Richard Burbage.

“Oho, my William,” said the tragedian. “Piecing out, I presume, a
further parcel of neat verses for the fair Rosalind?”

“No, Dick, a greater affair than that is toward.”

The tone banished all levity from Burbage’s lips. “Why, what is the
matter?” he said.

“Must I tell it or must I not?” The playwright seemed to be thinking
aloud. Then he broke out with a kind of petulance. “I would to heaven I
was not curst with this fell disease!”

“Which of your fell diseases is that, dear coz?”

“The bitterest of them all--the disease of not being able to know your
own mind.”

“The penalty of high imagination, my friend,” said Richard Burbage,
with an air of understanding and sympathy.

“You are right, Dickon. The penalty of imagination, as you say. One of
these days I will take a revenge upon myself and make a play of it. It
is the bitterest thing in the world. There’s no peace in this life for
those who suffer it. But I have here a matter in which I crave your
help. Sit ye there, by the yew-tree yonder, and I will unfold the most
tragical tale that ever came from the lips of man.”

Burbage sat as his friend desired. In spite of his colleague’s
perplexed face he was prepared for one of those odd, fantastic,
whimsical inventions that often enough had been poured into his ear.
But this was to prove another kind of matter altogether.

The story did not take long in the telling. The tragedian was thrilled
by it. He listened with fascinated attention.

“And now, Dick,” said the playwright when he had come to the end of the
tragic story, “I ask you what is to be done?”

“Aye, what indeed!” said Burbage in his deep voice.

“God help them, poor souls!” said the poet tenderly.

“Amen to that!” said Burbage.

These were wise men. There were few of the coils that fate weaves for
her children with which they were unacquainted. But here was a matter
which in its sinister and tragic complexity seemed to lie beyond their
grasp.

The problem was indeed a sore one. They were true subjects of the
Queen. As loyal, chivalrous and honorable men they could appreciate
the cruel pass of the unfortunate Sir John Feversham, and also of the
ill-starred falconer. But how was it possible to deliver up two such
fugitives, two who were little more than children, who had dared and
done so much, to the vengeance of the law?

“I ask you, Dick, what is to be done?” said the playwright.

The tragedian sat with his head in his hands, the picture of desolation.

“Nay, Will,” he said haplessly, “you would do better to consult God and
your own conscience.”

“An’ I do that,” said the playwright, “a curse will lie on my soul for
ever-more.”




CHAPTER XVII


AFTER their fine repast at the Crown, Gervase and Anne left Oxford at
once. Soon they were in the pleasant meadows that lay all about that
famous city. It was a really glorious morning of the early summer, with
the sun, which day by day had scorched them, more powerful than ever.

All the forenoon they wandered idly in the fields. Anne shamed her
boy’s apparel by plucking the wild flowers, gathering a great posy.
There seemed hardly need for a care just then. They had money enough
to carry them through the day and even provide a modest lodging at
nightfall. The grass in which they lay for long hours was soft, dry,
delicious.

Every day that passed strengthened the sense of comradeship that
sustained them. They were all to one another now. Yet enraptured as
they were with their love, they were never able to forget that they
were proscribed. This glimpse of happiness could only be a transient
thing. Any day, at any hour, Gervase was likely to fall into the hands
of his enemies. But whenever that dread accident befell them, as sooner
or later it must, they had made their pledge that they would die
together.

Was there no way of ultimate escape? Each day that passed had seemed
to minister to their love of life. As they lay in the grass, gazing
afar into a heaven so gorgeous that it filled them with wonder, this
longing to live took hold of them both with a still greater intensity.
Was there no way by which an entirely innocent man could escape the
scaffold?

If only they had a little money to buy a passage on board ship they
might hope to escape across the seas. Instead of wandering aimlessly
from place to place, void of purpose or design, there was no reason why
they should not make for the coast. Unhappily it was likely to profit
them little when they came there unless they could provide themselves
with some money.

The whole of Gervase’s property had passed into the hands of the wicked
man who had borne false testimony against him. This man was his uncle,
Simon Heriot, who had succeeded to his personal effects and his estate
in the west of England. These had been confiscated by the Crown.
And in that age it was customary to bestow the spoils of successful
prosecution upon the person or persons who had procured the conviction
of the offender!

Gervase knew that he was the victim of a very wicked conspiracy. Simon
Heriot, cunning, covetous, unspeakably vile, had laid his plans only
too well. So deftly woven the plot, so wisely chosen its instruments
and so skilful their use of forged proofs and false evidence that from
the first the unlucky Gervase had had little chance of escape.

He had been caught securely in a trap. The charges had been laid
against him with such diabolical skill that it was almost impossible
to disprove them. It was in vain that he had cast himself upon the
mercy of the Queen. Simon Heriot, ignoble as he was at heart, was a
person of some place, and not without consideration at Court; and he
had always been able to mask his cunning well enough to pass for a
high-minded and honorable man.

It chanced, however, that as thus Anne and Gervase lay together in this
golden afternoon, whiling away the sweet hours that were likely to be
so few, this intense desire for life suddenly found expression in a
desperate resolve. Gervase remembered that the house of Simon Heriot
was but a matter of ten miles or so from the city of Oxford. And no
sooner did this fact occur to him than he was taken with the idea that
it might be possible to go there and force his uncle to disgorge enough
of his ill-gotten gains to enable Anne and himself to fly the country.

This bold scheme began to exert a strange fascination over him. The
more thought he gave to it the stronger grew its hold upon him.
Certainly it must prove very hazardous; it was the wild design of a
desperate man, but it appealed to his mood.

When he came to confide the plan to his comrade she too approved it. To
Anne it opened up a new world of possibility. The spirit of desperation
urging her, she could see no reason why they should not break into the
house of Simon Heriot in the middle of that night and seek the means to
carry them into safety across the seas.

Yes, let that be their project! Both saw, however, that one fatal
drawback confronted them. To put such a design into execution it was
of vital importance that they should go armed. Thus they now regretted
bitterly that the silver-hilted dagger was no longer in their keeping.

It would be sheer folly to present themselves unarmed at the house of
Simon Heriot. A weapon of some kind must be procured if the project was
to have any chance of success. Gervase hoped that, with a little luck,
he might be able to barter his flute for a pistol but, unhappily, by so
doing he was likely to deprive them of their sole means of getting food.

This question of arms was a sore problem. However, they decided to take
a night’s rest before coming to grips with it in earnest. And they may
have been moved to this wise course by the fact that the house of Simon
Heriot lay out upon the Banbury road, and that in order to come to it,
it would be necessary to retrace their steps and pass through the town
of Oxford.

They bought a bowl apiece of bread and milk of a kindly farmer’s wife,
and this made them a delicious supper. And for the sum of twopence they
were allowed to lie snug in the barn during the night. And as they lay
thus, discussing the prospects of the strange hazard upon which they
were determined to embark on the morrow, a new expedient came into the
mind of Gervase.

Ever since their meeting that morning with the man at the Crown, the
thoughts of Gervase strayed continually toward him. He was not a man to
forget. And now as Gervase lay in the straw in the darkness considering
what must be done, his mind reverted to him again.

All his instincts seemed to tell him that this was an honest man;
moreover a man capable of rare kindness and instant sympathy; a man
whom it would seem possible for even a couple of hard-pressed fugitives
to trust implicitly.

Yes, let them return to Oxford to the Crown. Let them seek out this man
Shakespeare and tell him as much of their story as might serve to win
his help. As Gervase lay that night he took a resolve to do this. He
would confide in the man as far as might be necessary. Perchance this
friendly player might approve sufficiently this hazardous excursion to
the house of Simon Heriot to provide him with a weapon to serve the
occasion.

When the morning came, however, this plan seemed to err a good deal on
the side of boldness. In broad daylight it appeared very far from wise
to put such trust in a man, who, after all, was no more than a total
stranger. Might he not prove, when their story was told to him, one of
those zealots whose devotion to the Queen would cause him to betray
these fugitives from justice?

Still, in spite of all misgiving, Gervase finally determined to take
the risk. Even when every argument had been urged on the other side of
the question, he still felt that if only they dared to put their faith
in this man who had already shown them such kindness, they would not
appeal in vain for his friendship.

They were about seven miles from Oxford. Having laid out their
remaining store of pence on a frugal breakfast they trudged forth and
in less than two hours had re-entered the city.




CHAPTER XVIII


MR. WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE had had a bad night. Indeed he had hardly slept
at all. For the life of him he could not rid his mind of that tragic
matter in which by fate’s unkindness he had come to be an unwilling
actor.

His thoughts reverted continually to those hapless children of destiny
begging their bread in the hamlets round Oxford, while their lives hung
by a thread; and to the luckless falconer, man of high instincts and
strong tormented soul, pursuing them relentlessly from place to place.
To this man, moreover, whatever his God and his conscience might have
to say to him, he had been tempted to lie.

It was now eight o’clock of another glorious summer morning, and the
playwright, looking rather wild-eyed and haggard, sat on the bench
before the door of the Crown Tavern as he had done the previous day.
But now, instead of holding a mass of papers on his knee he was seeking
solace from a thick brown folio lately from the press, North’s noble
translation of the Lives of Plutarch.

It is strange how events repeat themselves. As on the previous day at
that hour, the player suddenly looked up from the page and beheld the
identical sight upon which his eyes had then rested. Two nut-brown
wanderers were coming towards him, without a noise of music this time,
but walking hand in hand as if each desired the sustenance of the
other’s courage.

Clearly the player was more than a little startled by the sight of
them. A curious look flitted across his face. It was almost that of one
who has seen a phantom in the daylight.

The fugitives were quick to notice that the player’s manner towards
them had changed. For all their raggedness his address was far more
considered than it had been the previous day. In lieu of the air of
light, graceful badinage that had charmed them then was a grave tone
which was not without a note of respectfulness. It was as if he had
learned since last he had seen them that they were not as they appeared.

“I give you good morrow, sir,” said Gervase.

He kept the humble tone he was wont to use in his present condition.
But now a look of pity came into the face of the play-actor.

Somehow this entire change in Shakespeare’s manner, together with
the nature of the errand on which they had come, served to embarrass
discourse. On the side of neither was the lightness and ease of the
day before. The few lame sentences they exchanged seemed further to
increase the difficulty.

But at last said the player suddenly, fixing them both with his gentle
but somber eyes: “Sit here, my friends, on the bench beside me and tell
me a little of yourselves.”

The look of the man was so gravely beguiling that they were fain to do
as he desired.

How to begin his strange, his incredible story was now the problem for
Gervase. How much should he tell? He would take this man fully into his
confidence in all that concerned himself, but in regard to Anne it was
another affair. Indeed, so little did the part she had borne relate to
their present need of this man’s kindness that Gervase was determined
not to mention her unless circumstances forced him to do so.

It was not easy to begin the story. But, after a moment of awkwardness
in which there was a slow gathering of all he had of resolution, the
young man took the plunge. “First,” he said, turning his own candid
eyes full upon those of the player, “I would have you to know that I am
about to intrust my life to your hands.”

The player did not speak except that which his eyes spoke for him.

“My name is Gervase Heriot,” said the young man. “I am being hunted for
my life. I broke out of my prison three hours before I was to die by
the ax.”

“You say you were to die by the ax,” said the player in a tone so low
as hardly to be audible. “For what reason had you to meet a death so
sharp and so shameful?”

“For the reason,” said Gervase, “that a wicked, covetous man has
plotted away my life.”

“Why has he done this?”

“It is merely because he would succeed to that to which he is not
entitled.”

“He has sworn away your life, you say?”

“Yes, he has himself borne false testimony. And he has suborned others
as vile as himself to swear a tissue of lies in order to prove me
guilty of a crime of which I am incapable.”

“Who, pray, is this infamous man?”

“He is my uncle, Simon Heriot.”

“And have you no means of disproving this black conspiracy?”

“None, alas. My Uncle Simon has a very cunning and subtle mind. His
design has been laid very deep. It is a matter of my unsupported oath
against those of specious knaves who are well found in the trade of
swearing away men’s lives.”

The play-actor grew silent. Not for a moment could he doubt that
Gervase Heriot was innocent of the crime alleged against him.

It was a grievous story. And one-half of it had not been told. And he
knew it to be all compact of those elements of which his own mind was
formed. It was such a tale of passion, of poetry, of high romance as
the imagination could not surpass, and the living evidence of it was
before him.

A great desire to help these hapless wanderers surged in this man’s
soul. There were those who were seeking them far and near; a price was
on the head of Heriot; yet if he were allowed to get clear it might be
that a cruel and shameful penalty would be paid by a man of stainless
honor. All these swift thoughts were thrown into the alembic of that
wonderful mind. But the call of nature was too strong; his heart went
out to these fugitives in their tragic need. Cost what it may, he must
render any help that lay in his power.

“Mr. Heriot,” said the player after a long interval of silence had
passed, “I would fain save your life?”

The young man shook his head gravely. “There’s little chance of that
unless I fly the country.”

“I was thinking so,” said the player.

“But in order to do that I must have some money. And I will now tell
you, sir--” Gervase sank his voice very low--“the manner in which I
propose to get it.”

Thereupon the young man divulged the plan he had formed of visiting his
uncle that night.

“Simon Heriot lives in solitude in his gloomy old manor-house but ten
miles off, with only a few decrepit old servants to take care of him.
And my design is to break into his house in the middle of this very
night, to frighten the wits out of the old knave and make him disgorge
money enough for mine and my brother’s journey across the seas.”

This hasty and ill-considered scheme, however, did not appeal to the
player. It was too clearly the expedient of a thoroughly desperate man.
There were many reasons which seemed to make it impracticable. “No, Mr.
Heriot,” he said, “I do not think that way is to be commended. Let us
try to find a better. I will go and think upon this matter. And in the
meantime do you and your friend remain here and I will send you out
some food, which I have no doubt will come not amiss to you.”

For that surmise at least the player had good warrant. Soon a stately
pigeon pie and a noble flagon of October ale were laid on the bench
before them. And they were able to eat without misgiving. They had
given this man all their trust, and they had staked their lives on the
fact that he was incapable of betraying it.




CHAPTER XIX


MEANWHILE William Shakespeare had gone in quest of Richard Burbage,
that _fidus Achates_ whose counsel was often invoked by this eager,
but, at times, irresolute spirit. Now, however, Shakespeare was fully
determined to help these ill-starred fugitives to the utmost of his
power.

To render aid that should be in any way effective was likely to prove
a supremely difficult matter. The most obvious thing to be done was to
give them money enough to enable them to fly the country. Such a course
offered a strong temptation at the moment. But when Shakespeare came to
consider all the consequences that would follow upon it he put it out
of his mind. At the back of his thoughts was ever the distraught figure
of the falconer, the unhappy man whom he had been compelled to deceive.
If Heriot fled the country Sir John Feversham would lose his life. No,
the hour was not yet for such an irrevocable step. “But, my friend,”
whispered a sinister voice, too often heard in that overwrought brain,
“you of all men have reason to know that delays are dangerous!”

Alas he was face to face once more with the old sore problem--the
problem of how to make up his mind. Once more he began to see too much
of this grievous matter, as he saw too much of all things. He owed it
to himself that he should do all in his power to help this unlucky
pair. But no hurt must be done to the falconer, or to the honorable man
his master, who lay in the Tower in such tragic case.

The playwright, in the toils of an irresolution as great as he had ever
known, went to seek the tragedian in his favorite place, which was the
pleasant garden at the back of the inn. Fortune favored him, inasmuch
that Richard Burbage was found to be seated on a bench in the ample
shade of a yew tree.

The manager was alone, and with the aid of a pipeful of the new Indian
weed which seldom failed to excite the wit of his peers, was diligently
conning the acting parts of the new comedy to be given a fortnight
hence in the Queen’s presence.

“William Shakespeare,” said Burbage, looking up as the shadow of the
playwright was cast across the page, “let these young fools say what
they please, but my belief is you have never written anything choicer.”

“I am glad to hear you say that, Dick,” said the playwright, who spoke,
however, as if his thoughts were elsewhere. “If I could have taken
another fortnight to it perhaps it might have been tolerable, but as it
is I am afraid it is a poor thing.”

“The thing is good enough,” said Burbage robustly. “It is full of most
excellent fantasy. The fact is, some of these fools have not wit enough
for a thing of such delicacy.”

The playwright shook his head. “Yes, Dick,” he said, “but a man makes a
great mistake when he gets above the crowd. There should be something
for all the world and his wife in a comedy.”

Richard Burbage, one of the intellectuals of his day, was a little
shocked by such a banal observation. Had it been possible for the god
of his idolatry to seem less than himself, he had never been in such
imminent danger. But the true prince must ever be allowed to speak as
it seemed good to him.

“We will thank God that Gloriana has at any rate a shrewd and seizing
mind,” said Richard Burbage, with enthusiasm. “At least, it will not be
above _her_.”

The playwright smiled the little sad smile that was so often his when
others chose to refer to his writings in his presence. None had ever
been able to interpret that gesture; none ever would, but it was a
smile of pain rather than of happiness.

With a sudden effort of the will the playwright cast these trivialities
out of his thoughts. “Dick,” he said, “I am come to talk of a matter
of more account than this. I would have you know that our poor young
Egyptians are returned.”

“Oh, a murrain on them!” The face of the tragedian grew startled and
discomposed. “Plague take them,” he said, “I had hoped we had seen the
last of them.”

“Poor souls!” said the playwright.

Never had Burbage seen his too-sensitive comrade--to whom he had come
to stand in the relation of a protective elder brother--in such a state
of distress. The tragic story had torn his heart. But the counsel of
the tragedian was sadly discouraging.

“If you will be ruled by me, my friend,” said that sage and practical
man of the world, “you will take precious care to keep out of this
matter. Let them go their ways. The times are perilous. And he who
touches affairs of state generally finds it easier to lose his head
than to keep it.”

“You are right there, Dick,” said the playwright, with an odd light
in his eyes. “But better a man should lose his head than forswear his
soul.”

Burbage knew that it was vain to argue with William Shakespeare in a
matter of this kind. There were certain things in which he was not as
other men. For all his childlike simplicity of character, he had yet
the power, as he had proved many times, to take a line of his own when
occasion called.

“Dick, we must help them,” he said.

“The surest way to do that is to give them money enough to quit the
country,” said the tragedian.

“But what of Sir John Feversham?”

Burbage threw up his hands impatiently. “He concerns us not,” he said.
“And I beseech you, my dear Will, to give not another thought to him.”

The playwright shook his head. “Nay, my friend,” he said, “let us not
leave a brave and honorable man to die.”

“To that I would say amen if in any sort we could avail him.”

“The Queen should learn the truth, I think.”

“How, pray, is she to learn it?”

“On Thursday se’nnight, if this unlucky man still lives, we must find a
way to tell her.”

But Burbage dissented strongly. “It would be madness, Will, sheer
madness for us to breathe a word on the subject. You know what the
times are. And when it comes to treason it takes but a very slight
thing to undo the best man alive.”

The playwright had sadly to admit that that was true enough. But his
face showed clearly that he could never be the slave of mere worldly
wisdom. And Burbage knew it. He might do his best to dissuade his
friend from touching this ill-starred affair, yet from the outset he
had little hope of success. William Shakespeare’s mind was made up
already.

“Come what may, Dick, we must help these poor souls to the utmost of
our capacity.”

“Yes, but how will you do it, my master?”

But now that the sympathy of the playwright was fully engaged he was
proof against all scepticism. “First I would have you give me the key
of the tiring-room,” he said.

“For what purpose, you mad fellow?”

“An uncivil question breeds an uncivil answer. Whatever the purpose it
is nothing to it.”

With many misgivings and great reluctance, Burbage gave Shakespeare the
key of the tiring-room.




CHAPTER XX


WHEN Shakespeare returned to the fugitives, they had finished their
meal. They were still sitting on the bench by the tavern door.

“Mr. Heriot,” said the player, “I have been thinking very deeply upon
your pass. First let me say that I have a great desire to help you--and
your friend--to help you as far as lies in my capacity.”

Gervase thanked him simply.

“But in order to do that,” said the player, “I have to ask you to yield
yourselves entirely into my care. I would have you do in all things as
I desire. It is not that I can promise your deliverance. It may be that
your pass is beyond my aid or beyond the aid of any man. But if it is
possible for help to be given, that will I do my utmost to render--that
is, if you are prepared to trust me to the full.”

Gervase knew that it was his life he was giving into the care of this
man, but not for an instant did he hesitate.

“I trust you to the full,” he said. “And may God requite you for all
that you may do.”

“Alas, it may be but little. But no failure on my part can make
your case more unhappy than it is now. And one matter at least is
imperative. You must find a better disguise than your present one.
Happily, there is the means at hand. Perhaps you and your friend will
come with me to the players’ tiring-room, which is across the inn yard?”

Gervase and Anne rose from the bench in order to accompany the actor.

As they did so, however, their attention was for a moment diverted. A
man, attended by two servants and whose style was that of a gentleman,
rode up to the inn door. He dismounted within three yards of where the
fugitives stood, and as he was about to enter the tavern, he turned his
bold eyes upon them.

It was hardly more than a glance in passing, and not more than he would
have bestowed on any other pair of picturesque vagabonds, but brief as
it was, there yet seemed in it a kind of subconscious recognition. The
glance was withdrawn instantly to alight on Shakespeare, on whom it
dwelt long enough for the recognition openly to declare itself. In this
case it was followed by a shrug of insolent contempt. The newcomer then
entered the inn.

In the meantime, Gervase had grown as pale as if he had seen a ghost.
But it was not until he was half-way across the inn courtyard that he
revealed the cause of his emotion.

“Did you, by any chance, recognize that fellow?” he asked.

“Yes, I did,” said Shakespeare. “He is a man well known about the
Court, a certain Sir Robert Grisewood.”

“Yes, Sir Robert Grisewood,” said Gervase. “And it was he, at the
instance of my Uncle Simon, who swore away my life.”

The player stopped abruptly in the middle of the inn yard, an
exclamation upon his lips.

“That’s undoubtedly the man,” said Gervase, “by all that’s unlucky. Or
may be it is not unlucky, since Providence works in ways so dark and
strange.”

“Wherein I fully agree,” said the player. “And it may be that even in
this Providence is working for us in a mysterious way. But I hope this
man did not know you.”

“I think he did not,” said Gervase. “His eye would have dwelt longer if
he had. But you he certainly recognized; moreover, he did not seem to
approve you.”

Shakespeare smiled.

“He is one of a hundred bullies who ruffle it about the Court. When
they are not cringing before their betters, they are generally
browbeating those whom they are pleased to consider their inferiors.”

“He is a very dangerous man,” said Gervase, “And if I cross his path,
my life will not be worth an hour’s purchase.”

“Well, the tiring-room is not far away,” said the player. “And there, I
think, we can find you a disguise that will tax the wit of Sir Robert
to penetrate.”

The inn was a large, rectangular building, provided with galleries
which overlooked the spacious courtyard. It was in this that the
Lord Chamberlain’s servants had arranged to give the first of their
performances that afternoon. The room to which the actor now led Anne
and Gervase opened on to one of these galleries, at the extreme end of
the yard.

Here were all sorts of stage properties. Not only was there a number
of costumes, but also there were wigs, powder and cosmetics and
other trappings of the theater. Much searching among this apparel
was necessary before clothes could be found which Shakespeare deemed
suitable for Gervase and Anne. Many of these costumes were very rich;
and at last an elegant suit of boy’s clothes was found for Anne. She
went into a room adjoining to put it on. And, in the meantime, Gervase
was provided with a much more elaborate disguise.

First, he was put into a suit of plain black velvet, modest in
appearance, but excellent in quality, very similar to the player’s own.
Then his eyes were carefully darkened and lines painted under them to
add to his years. A pair of fine moustachios was fixed to his upper
lip and a short beard to his chin. Finally, he was accommodated with a
hat with a plume, a ruff for the neck, and at his own request, a very
serviceable sword, which he buckled to his waist with a feeling of keen
satisfaction.

The transformation Gervase had undergone was so complete, that when
Anne returned wearing her own excellent suit, which fitted her
admirably except that it was a little loose in the shoulders, she did
not know him.

“Allow me to present Signor Bandinello,” said the player. “A famous
music master from Italy.”

Anne, in the surprise of the moment, so far forgot her own disguise
as to curtsy. Whereupon, greatly to her discomfiture, Gervase and the
player fairly shouted with laughter.

Anne’s clothes really became her very well indeed. They could hardly
have fitted her slender form better had they been made for her. She,
too, was given a ruff for her neck, a hat with a plume and a dagger to
wear at her waist. Thus accomplished, she made a particularly handsome
and modish boy.

Gervase’s disguise, which had added at least thirty years to his
age, was so complete, that the player had no fear that he would be
recognized. Accordingly, he led him boldly into the inn and duly
presented him to Burbage, Kemp and one or two other members of the
company as a celebrated musician who had consented to take charge of
the music at Richmond on Tuesday week. Anne was introduced as his
son. And it was suggested that Arrigo, a name bestowed upon her by
the playwright on the spur of the moment, should understudy Parflete
for the character of _Rosalind_. Indeed, the author of the new comedy
seemed to be clearly of opinion that the young Signor Arrigo had been
designed expressly by nature to play that delicate and exacting rôle.

Burbage guessed at once who Signor Bandinello and Arrigo his son really
were. But he was far too loyal, even if he had not been too astute, to
share his knowledge with the other members of the company. These, to be
sure, were a little surprised at such an unexpected addition to their
number. Yet not for a moment did they suspect the truth.

Thus, for the time being, a very remarkable change was wrought in the
fortunes of Gervase and Anne. No longer need they seek a roof or a
meal. No longer need they go footsore and hungry. Providence once more
had taken them into its care. It was true that, in some ways, they had
added threefold to their dangers. They had given their lives into the
keeping of a man of whom they knew little or nothing. But having burnt
their boats, they had the courage wholeheartedly to embrace this new
way of life.

They entered into the doings of these new friends with spirit and
amenity. And Shakespeare sustained the deception with great tact and
wit. Moreover, Gervase and Anne were ever ready to second him in all
his inventions and contrivances. Indeed, Gervase, who was familiar with
Italy, was able to counterfeit a slight accent, which heightened the
illusion of his broken English; while Anne, although not a little shy,
bore herself with a modest grace, that made the young Signor Arrigo
extremely popular with all the members of the Company.

It chanced, besides, that when these two Italians had made their
appearance but a few hours among the Lord Chamberlain’s servants, an
incident occurred which added greatly to their prestige.

It had been arranged that the chief members of the Company, who were
lodged at the Crown Tavern, which was reckoned much the best in Oxford,
should dine together at noon in the large parlor. This would allow
plenty of time against the performance of “The Merchant of Venice,”
which was to be given in the inn courtyard at two o’clock that
afternoon.

The players had sat down to their meal. Shakespeare, at the head of
the long table in the center of the room, was carving a sirloin with
the dexterity of one who had been a butcher’s apprentice in his youth.
Burbage, at the foot of the table, was dealing with a couple of roast
fowls with an air of manly conviction. Anne had already been given a
wing, and William Kemp, that famous comedian, was cutting a piece of
ham to accompany it, with a flourish of wit as well as of knife, when
the door of the dining-parlor was flung open suddenly. A man entered
rudely and roughly with a clank of sword and spur. He had not even the
grace to remove his hat.

One glance he cast round the room, saw no place was set for him, and
then called loudly for the landlord.

“The place is full of these stinking play-actors!” he cried out. “The
best inn in Oxford is now the worst. These mimes have taken all the
best rooms, they infest the place like vermin. They are sticking up
a filthy stage upon filthy trestles in the middle of the courtyard,
so that a man hasn’t even room to water his horse, and now, by God’s
blood, they crowd their betters out of the dining-parlor!”

The man was Sir Robert Grisewood, whom Shakespeare and Gervase had seen
already. He was an insolent bully, of a type common in that day; a man
of brutal and dangerous character, who lived by his wits and his sword,
with just enough surface manners when it suited him to pass muster with
those with whom he wished to consort, but whose chief pleasure was to
ruffle it through the world and take the wall of those less well placed
than himself.

This morning, however, Sir Robert was a little out of his reckoning.
The man with the mild face who was carving the sirloin paused to
look at him. And if ever a high scorn was expressed in the human
countenance, it was here to be seen.

“Yes, I mean you as well as the rest, you paper-faced potboy,” said
Grisewood, having failed to stare him down. “Go back to your filthy
playhouse in the stews, and don’t come among your betters until they
send for you, unless you want to get your nose pulled.”

The coarse bully had drunk a cup of wine too much already that morning.
He was bitterly angry, besides, that his favorite chamber overlooking
the garden was in the occupation of this mean fellow, who lived by the
public favor instead of by cheating at cards. With a string of oaths,
he advanced upon Shakespeare and shook a fist in his face.

In an instant, several of the players had risen to their feet. But
foremost was Burbage. He laid down his knife, and then, white with
anger, he came over very deliberately to where the man stood and
touched him on the shoulder.

“Have a care, my friend,” he said. “Keep a civil tongue in your head.
And lay but a finger on that man, and you go into the horse-trough.”

“But you go to perdition first, you calf-livered merry-andrew.”

Grisewood had swung round with a face of fury. He drew his sword. But
in almost the same moment Heriot, who had risen with the rest, had
drawn his.

Grisewood had not meant to make use of his weapon. Yet in the next
instant, and quite without expecting it, he was having to use it for
dear life.

Gervase at once struck up the weapon with his own and then engaged it.
Grisewood was a man of formidable reputation. More than one good life
had paid the toll of his exceptional skill. His adversary was aware of
this. But he also was an accomplished swordsman. Moreover, an intense
and furious hatred had armed him suddenly. This was the man who had
sworn away his life.




CHAPTER XXI


THE sound of the clashing steel, of chairs overturning, of shouting and
scuffling, brought John Davenant into the room. The sight that met him
turned him sick. A man of whom he went in mortal fear was defending
himself as best he could from the furious lunges of a tall, elderly
foreigner, who yet used his sword with all a young man’s address and
agility.

“Oh, stop ’em, for the love of God!” cried John Davenant.

But the players knew better than to intervene. The bully was being
pressed so close and with such a bitter animosity, that for any man
to have attempted such a task had been highly dangerous. Also they
knew the man for what he was. And now was as fair a chance as was ever
likely to offer for him to pay his dues.

The Italian music master was pressing Grisewood at the point of his
weapon all over the room. But only one of those present was aware that
he had murder in his heart. And this was the man who knew what was the
real issue between them. That agile mind, moreover, had the power to
look swiftly ahead. In an instant, it had grasped the full significance
of that which was happening and of the grave danger that threatened.

In the stress of the moment, Shakespeare threw discretion to the wind.
He approached far nearer than was wise to the combatants. Their breaths
were coming in fierce, low grunts. Sweat was on their white faces.
Murder was in the eyes of both.

Utterly heedless of his peril, Shakespeare went to the side of Gervase.

“Have a care,” he said. “For God’s sake don’t kill him.”

Well it was that Gervase was of those who can keep a hold upon
themselves, even when a savage blood-lust has them in its toils.
Desperately as he was fighting, he heard the words of his friend, and
well he understood them. But he was out to kill. With a contained rage
that was terrible, he meant to pierce that strong and resourceful
guard, and then should the man pay the penalty of his crimes.

Grisewood was not a coward. He was among the coarsest and most brutal
of his kind in a coarse and brutal age. His life had been ignoble, but
he was a man, in any circumstances, to sell it dearly. Yet as this tall
and furious fellow drove him all over the room, he felt that now his
hour was come.

This would have been the case without a doubt, had not Gervase realized
the importance of the player’s warning. He must lay aside his revenge
for a season. This man was a link in the slender chain that one day
might save him. But he was determined that the ruffian should not go
scot free. By sheer vigor, he drove Grisewood finally against the wall.
And once there, he broke down the man’s guard and drove the point of
his sword through his arm.

It was the end of the fight. Grisewood was totally disabled. Suffering
great pain and bleeding fiercely and streaming curses, he was glad
enough to have his hurt attended to and then, under a chirurgeon’s
advice, to be put to bed by John Davenant.

From that hour, the Italian music master was a hero in the sight of the
Lord Chamberlain’s servants. To be sure, his son, Arrigo, disgraced
himself utterly by going off into a dead faint as soon as the fight was
over, and although such behavior was felt perhaps to be ultra-Italian,
it did not lessen his popularity among his new comrades.

Two o’clock that afternoon was the hour fixed for the Lord
Chamberlain’s players to give their first performance in Oxford. Much
of the morning had been spent in erecting a stage in the center of
the spacious courtyard of the Crown. It seemed that the visit of this
famous company had given rise to grave controversy. Shakespeare had
applied for leave to play three pieces in the large hall of Balliol
College, or of some other convenient place within the precincts of the
University. The question was referred to the Vice Chancellor. “Yes,”
said that worthy, “after giving the matter anxious consideration, as we
have a favorable report from London touching your band of comedians,
and we learn that her Grace the Queen has approved them on divers
occasions, the University will accede to your request, provided the
pieces are given in their original Greek or Latin.”

Upon this, the playwright made the modest rejoinder that, much as he
regretted the circumstances, it was, in point of fact, impossible
to play the three pieces in either of those chaste tongues, since
he himself had written them in the vulgar English language, which
unfortunately was the only tongue with which he could claim an
acquaintance, and that a very imperfect one. Such a statement was very
shocking to the University. The permission was at once withheld, but in
language of great politeness and dignity. “We do not well understand,”
it said in effect, “how one who is not even a member of this University
or of the sister foundation of Cambridge, who, we are credibly
informed, is a mere hackney writer for the theaters, and who, we are
further informed, is a little better than one of the illiterate, can
prefer such a request.”

After this rebuff, the playwright, quite undaunted, applied to the
city authorities for permission to use the Town Hall. In the meantime,
however, the news had been carried to the bench of aldermen that the
University had rebuked this importunate fellow. And if the vulgar
English tongue was beneath the dignity of the Gown, how much more was
it beneath the dignity of the Town, which had a reputation to maintain
and so much less upon which to maintain it. “No, sir,” said the bench
of aldermen, “we would have you to know that that which is not deemed
worthy for only a part or moiety of this fair city, is deemed still
less so for the whole of it.”

Thus there was nothing left for the poor playwright to do but to seek
permission of honest John Davenant, mine host of the Crown, to set up
trestles and boards and rig up a curtain in the middle of his large inn
yard. And John Davenant, having less in the way of learning than the
Gown and less in the way of dignity than the Town, and being promised,
moreover, a full ten percentum of the takings at each performance, was
nowise averse from such a proceeding.

The play to be given that afternoon was “The Merchant of Venice,” a
pleasant comedy that had already been played several times with success
in Shoreditch. The author of the piece had not to play in it himself,
a contingency for which he expressed himself devoutly thankful. “A bad
play is doubly damned,” he said, “if the author himself has to preen
and strut in it.”

That afternoon, the more congenial and not less onerous rôle was to
be his of sitting at the receipt of custom. But his friend, Richard
Burbage, had for his sins to play the Jew. And the famous tragedian
was fain to declare that the playwright as usual had got the best of
the bargain, inasmuch that it was far easier to play the Jew in the
box-office than it was upon the boards.

These players were a high-spirited, light-hearted, genial crew. The
incident in which they had been concerned in nowise affected their
gaiety. They lived in and for the moment; they took life as it came
to them; theirs was the sovereign faculty of being able to lay care
aside. They were prone to set all sorts of tricks upon one another, and
to crack jokes and tell tales at one another’s expense. They seemed
to have no particular respect for anybody, not even for Shakespeare
himself, but Anne and Gervase noticed that only one man in all that
merry, careless company ever ventured to break a lance with him.

Richard Burbage was the man in question. The tragedian was a short,
powerfully-made man, with a solemn face of much good-humor and an
organ-like voice that was both rich and deep. When the playwright and
his friend crossed swords, which they did pretty frequently, the whole
table would cease to ply knife and spoon in order that it might attend
the combat. These duellos, to be sure, were carried off in the highest
style of pleasantry, but the play was very keen while it lasted.

The dramatist sat at one end of the long table, and his trusty henchman
at the other.

“They do tell me,” said the tragedian, in his slow, rolling speech, and
bestowing a wink on those that were near him, “that this plaguy piece
we have all got to play in for our sins this plaguy afternoon is the
work of a certain court gallant by the name of William Shakespeare.”

At this, the dramatist at the other end of the table laid down his
knife very deliberately, and after gazing around as if in search of a
thing he could not see, said, “I wonder whence that growl proceeds. I
do believe there is a dog in the room. Young Parflete”--this to the
youngest and smallest member of the company--“young Parflete, I will
thank you to pitch it out with your foot behind it.”

“A friend,” proceeded the tragedian, in a very audible whisper for all
that he spoke behind his hand, “of the Queen’s most gracious majesty.
This is no reflection upon the Queen, still it must have been a sore
trial to her friendship when such a burden was laid upon it.”

“Yes, it is a dog,” said the dramatist, very gravely. “One of those
brindled, flop-eared, yellow-coated, squab-bellied mongrels by the
sound of it. It is the kind of dog that is only fit for a blind pedlar
to trundle at the end of a string. Hi, Thomas!”--addressing a servant
who had entered with a dish--“there is a dog in the room.”

“I don’t see it, sir,” said the servant, looking round.

“Oh, but there is, I tell you. One of those squat brutes all body and
no legs. One of those half-begotten starvelings that lies all day by
the hob and whines all night to the moon.”

“I see no dog, sir.”

“Have you looked under the table, Thomas?”

Thomas looked under the table, but still could see no dog.

“But I heard it, man, I tell you. There is no mistaking such a voice as
that.”

“There is no dog here, sir,” the servant assured him, solemnly.

“Upon your oath, there is no dog?”

“No dog, sir, upon my oath.”

“Then the sound must proceed,” said the playwright, “from that queer,
rude fellow who sits at the foot of the table there, of whom I am
credibly informed that, since he retired from the theater, he gains a
precarious livelihood by training bloodhounds to sing like canaries.”




CHAPTER XXII


THE inn courtyard was seething with excitement long before the play
began. Handbills had been distributed in the town for some days past,
and notices of the performance had been set up in prominent places.

A love of the drama, amounting almost to a passion, had taken hold
of all classes. From the Queen in her palace to the village idler in
his hedge alehouse, provided he could raise a penny to buy standing
room in the yard of the Crown Tavern, all took the keenest delight
in the new and wonderful drama that was rising in their midst. Every
phase of these strong and moving plays was followed with a breathless
excitement. They were given without scenery or the thousand and one
devices that help to sustain illusion in a modern theater. There was
literally nothing between the play and the audience, not even the
lure of sex, since all the women’s parts were played by boys, but the
success of these performances was extraordinary.

The Lord Chamberlain’s men were known to be a famous company. Their
headquarters were the Globe Theatre, the playhouse that had been built
recently on the Bankside in Southwark. But as their provincial tours
were numerous, their reputation had spread up and down the country.
They were already known as the best players of the time, and the plays
in which they appeared were held to be the strongest.

The stage had been set up at the end of the inn yard. Standing room
could be had for a penny on the cobblestones of the yard itself, but
the best and most comfortable places were those in the galleries, which
ran round three sides of it and commanded a full view of the stage. A
shilling was the charge for places here. But the most coveted place of
all was a stool on the stage, which was reserved for a few persons of
distinction.

Among those who had been given a seat on the stage this afternoon,
were three who had come in a spirit of scepticism. They were men of
dignified and authoritative bearing, keenly alive, no doubt, to their
condescension in gracing the proceedings with their presence. Much
discussion had taken place among these personages as to the importunity
which had sought to gain the sanction of the university for the play
about to be given, also for two others by the same uneducated hand.

There is little doubt that the subject would not have been thought
worthy of discussion in such exalted circles, would in fact have been
dismissed as a matter of not the least consequence, had it not been
that quite recently that august man, the Dean of Christ Church College,
had enjoyed the privilege of eating with Gloriana in her palace at
Greenwich. And she had spoken in his hearing with high approval of
the man Shakespeare, and was even pleasantly anticipating his new
interlude, which was to be given for the first time in her presence on
some fine summer’s afternoon in Richmond Park.

In Ascalon they never referred to the fact that Gloriana, with all her
merits, was an unlettered woman, whose taste was robust. For a queen
is a queen even in the eyes of a Dean of Christ Church College; and
when this curious, little bald man in a furred gown confided to the
Master of Balliol, his distinguished coadjutor, that this mime whose
name he forgot was undoubtedly _persona gratissima_ in royal palaces,
they agreed that while such clowning could receive no sanction from the
University, it would hardly be seemly in the circumstances to drive the
mummers out of the town.

It happened, at that time, that the Master of Balliol had staying with
him in college a young man of promise, Mr. Francis Bacon by name, who
knew his way about the Court. And when the Dean chanced to mention that
this man, whose name he had forgotten, desired to perform three of his
interludes within the precincts of that ancient home of learning and
that the Queen approved him mightily, Mr. Francis Bacon, who even at
that time had taken all knowledge for his province, exclaimed, “By God,
it must be that plaguy fellow, Shakescene, that all the Court is mad
about!”

“Shakescene is the man’s name, undoubtedly,” said the eminent divine,
gravely. “An importunate Shakescene, moreover, who would play three of
his rustical interludes within the precincts of this old foundation.”

“Importunate enough, I grant you,” said Mr. Francis, taking snuff
with a great air. “Wat Raleigh tells me the numskull comes to Court
in a barred cloak and affects the style of a gentleman. However--fine
feathers make not fine birds. But why not let the rogue play his
interludes, eh, Master? How say you, Mr. Dean? And we will go
ourselves and witness ’em. I have long sought the opportunity to watch
one of the performances of this ripe scholar.”

“The rogue shall perform in the town, Mr. Francis,” said the Dean of
Christ Church, “if perform he must, but not, I promise you, within the
precincts of this old and honorable foundation.”

“I doubt not he would perform still better at the whipping post, where
such knaves more truly belong,” said the Master of Balliol, taking a
prodigious pinch of snuff from the box of the Dean. “But as you say,
Francis, let the rogue set up his booth in the city, and thither we
will repair of an afternoon. We can then judge for ourselves what it is
that the taste of Gloriana the peerless approves.”

Thus it happened that Gervase and Anne, who had been stowed away in a
corner of the gallery out of the sight of the multitude, were able to
gaze directly down upon these three grave and serious gentlemen, who
were seated upon the stage itself.

Grave and serious they might be. Yet as they decked the proscenium,
their demeanor was spiced with not a little levity. Not only their
surroundings, but the whole of that which was taking place, seemed to
provide food for their sly mirth.

Gervase had marked one of the three in particular immediately upon his
entrance.

“I know that man,” he whispered to Anne. “Yes, the fellow in the
feathered bonnet and the blue cloak. He is always about the Court. Sit
close, dear soul. He’s got the eye of a hawk, but, thank God, he won’t
look to see me like this.”

Indeed, Mr. Francis Bacon had eyes for nothing save the comedy that
was being performed for his benefit. Greatly condescending, the future
Lord Chancellor had come in the company of two learned pundits with no
better intention than to deride the piece and its author.

Now there never was yet a critic since the world began who accosts an
author in such a mood who has the least difficulty in making good his
intention. If the man has wit, he lacks propriety. If he has invention,
he lacks art. If his writing is marvelously alive, it is of course
barbarous. If it is poetical, it is not true to nature. If it should
happen to be true to nature, the whole performance is so flat, stale
and mediocre as to be unworthy of the pains spent upon it. Whichever
way the author turns, the critic is ready for him. Every merit he
possesses serves as a fresh weapon to assail him.

Had these gentlemen had the good fortune to live two hundred years
later, when the reputation of the author was already secure, they would
have been among the first to make him the standard of comparison.
It would have then been quite legitimate to admire “The Merchant of
Venice,” and even to have taken credit for doing so. But how was it
possible for men of polite learning to treat seriously the production
of a shabby fellow who took your half-crown at the entrance to the inn
yard?

Yet, in spite of themselves, Mr. Francis Bacon and his two august
friends were not a little diverted by the briskness of the piece. But
any entertainment there was to be derived from it had, of course, to be
laid to the door of the actors. The acting was undoubtedly excellent,
but the less said of the play, the better.

Still, notwithstanding the fact that the opinion of the critics who
graced the proscenium was not very favorable, all the rest of the house
appeared mightily to approve the play. The afternoon had turned wet and
there was no roof to the inn yard, but those who were packed in it so
closely that they could hardly breathe, followed the whole of the piece
with ever-growing excitement. They roared with delight at its humors.
_Portia_, who was played by young Parflete, enchanted them. They
execrated the Jew, yet Richard Burbage, as became the great actor he
was, invested his defeat with a pathetic dignity that almost drew their
tears.

“Ha! now, that is the man,” said Mr. Francis Bacon. “I ask you, what
had the play been without such incomparable acting?”

“What, indeed!” said the learned doctors.

“I must make that fellow my compliments upon his performance,” said the
Master of Balliol College.

And a few minutes afterwards, when the delighted audience was streaming
out of the yard, these great men condescended to approach the tragedian
and express their approval.

“Fain would I make you my compliments, sir,” said Mr. Francis Bacon, in
his highest style, in order to impress the person he addressed, “upon
the inimitable art you have used this afternoon. The performance would
have been barren enough without it. Never have I seen acting so choice
lavished on a play so inferior.”

The tragedian looked very doubtfully at Mr. Francis Bacon.

“By your leave, sir,” he said, “I would not have you exalt me at the
expense o’ the piece.”

“To be sure, sir, your modesty does you honor,” said the Master of
Balliol College. “But your genius, if I may so express myself, is
deserving of something far better than the clumsy work of this rude
journeyman.”

The tragedian shook his head.

“Nor would I have you exalt me at the expense of the writer,” he said.

“Ah, my friend, you are too modest,” interposed the Dean of Christ
Church in an amiable manner.

“If it is the part of modesty,” said the tragedian bluntly, “to decline
to be praised by the ignorant, then I grant you that modest I may be.
Because I would have you to know, you learned doctors in your furred
gowns, that the play you have just witnessed is by the first dramatic
author of this age or of any other.”

The three gentlemen were unable to repress a polite snigger.

“What!” said the Master of Balliol College, “that _odd_-looking fellow
with the beard who sat in the pay box and bit my half-crown as if he
feared it was a counterfeit?”

“The same, sir,” said Burbage. “And if you can put a counterfeit upon
him, you are an abler man than I have yet cause to consider you.”

“No doubt, sir,” said the Master of Balliol College, with an air of
pained dignity. “But, pray, convey my compliments to your Johannes
Factotum, and inform him that if he will give his days and nights
diligently to the study of Aristotle, he may, by the time he is a
very old man, be able to produce a passable play without doing grave
violence to the dramatic unities.”

“Perhaps you will be kind enough, sir,” said the tragedian, “to pay
William Shakespeare your own compliments, for here he comes staggering
under the receipts of the performance.”

The playwright, his face beaming with satisfaction, came towards them.

“We had near ten pound in the yard, Dick,” he said, with a frank
disregard of all things except the business in hand. “That is, unless
a half-crown that a little half-faced, chapt-shot, under-hung mouse of
a fellow in a furred gown put upon me is a counterfeit. And I am sore
afraid it is, unless my pooh old teeth have lost their integrity. Do
you try it, Dick.”

The playwright handed the dubious coin to the tragedian.

“I presume you refer to my half-crown, sir?” said the Master of Balliol
College, with great dignity.

“I hope, sir, I may presume to refer to it as your half-crown,” said
Mr. William Shakespeare, “if my friend Shylock here adjudges it to be
one. How now, Usurer, what say you?”

“If that is a half-crown,” said the tragedian, who had already bitten
the coin nearly through, “I’ll never be paid in anything but five
shilling pieces as long as I live.”

“But I protest, sir,” said the Master of Balliol College, warmly, “that
coin was paid to me last evening by my much-honored friend here, Mr.
Francis Bacon, over a game of primero.”

“The more shame to Mr. Francis Bacon, then,” said the tragedian, “that
he should use such a coin for such a purpose in such a company.”

Mr. Francis Bacon examined for himself the dubious currency.

“It cannot be the one I gave you, Master,” he said, as soon as he was
able to assure himself that the coin was false.

“Certainly it is, Francis,” said the Master of Balliol College, with a
pained air.

“I cannot believe it, Master. However--” Mr. Francis put the coin in
his pocket with the quiet dignity of one who realizes the force of the
old adage, _noblesse oblige_: which, in plain English, may be taken
to mean that it ill becomes gentlemen to argue among themselves in
the presence of the commonalty. “However, as I was saying, Master, to
return to Aristotle, that much-overrated sciolist, I do most cordially
approve your critical acumen when you say that if our friend Master
Shakescene----”

“Master Shakespeare,” interposed the tragedian, solemnly.

“I beg his pardon. If our friend, Master Shakespeare, here would study
the drama _ad hoc_, and give his days and nights to that matchless
work, the “Ars Poetica,” of Aristotle, there is indeed no reason why,
in the process of nature and always under the courtesy of providence,
he should not one day produce a work of the imagination that pays some
little regard to the laws that govern such quaint abortions of the
human mind.”

Mr. William Shakespeare listened with an air of grave courtesy to this
sage counsel. Like all men of parts, he was at heart a very humble man,
with a deep reverence for true learning. It was too late in the day for
him to hope to acquire it. He had never known the want of wit, yet in
his mind was ever the thought of how much better his plays would have
been could he have fashioned his rude verses after the manner of the
ancients.




CHAPTER XXIII


THE Lord Chamberlain’s servants were in the highest spirits. The
remarkable success of their first performance in the famous city of
Oxford had pleased them greatly. They had been put upon their mettle
by their cold reception at the hands of town and gown. Seldom had
they acted even one of their most effective plays with such force and
sincerity.

Long before the play was at an end, a triumph was assured. They had a
proud sense of having struck a shrewd blow to prejudice. Those in the
thronged galleries and the close-packed press all about the stage had
shouted themselves hoarse. The author of the play, who had a share in
the profits of the company, lost no time in turning the flood tide of
popular favor to account. His mind was a remarkable blend of business
acumen and high poetic genius. He arranged at once that the Lord
Chamberlain’s servants should extend their visit by three days, in
order that other of his pieces might be given. And among these was to
be a first performance of the new, pleasant, conceited comedy of “As
You Like It,” which in the following week was to be given at Richmond
Palace in the Queen’s presence.

There is nothing like a sense of success to uplift the heart. When
a man goes from triumph to triumph, his wit becomes more nimble,
his fancy expands, his talent runs the more free. And at this time,
all these happy conditions were fulfilled in the career of William
Shakespeare. He was at the zenith of his mental and physical power. All
things to which he turned his hand ministered to his fame and affluence.

The unlucky Gervase Heriot, lying in the shadow of a peril that would
have wrecked the strongest will, had come upon this man in an hour when
nothing seemed beyond the scope of his invention. The tragic history of
this young man, and of the noble girl who had forfeited all in order to
save his life, had wrought deeply upon the player’s pity.

Shakespeare had resolved to help the fugitives to the utmost of his
power. Such a decision in circumstances of such grave peril and
difficulty could only have sprung from the large generosity of a great
nature. He had all to lose by mingling in the affairs of one in this
grim pass. Nothing could be more perilous than to help a convicted
traitor to escape his doom, but in spite of the solemn warnings
and even the earnest prayers of his devoted friend, Burbage, the
playwright’s mind was now set upon this task.

It was easier, however, to form this resolve than to give it practical
expression. But the outcome of much anxious thought upon the matter was
to make one fact clear. If the life of Heriot was not to be spared at
the expense of a man as blameless as himself, an appeal must be made to
the Queen. And in order to do that with the smallest hope of success,
the young man must be able to adduce a strong proof of his innocence
and, at the same time, engage the Queen’s sympathy.

There lay the crux of the whole matter. And as soon as this conclusion
had been reached, the keenly practical mind of the playwright began
to grapple with this sore problem. At first, it seemed hopeless to do
anything. There appeared to be no means of obtaining the all-important
proof of Gervase Heriot’s innocence, without which it would be the
height of imprudence to bring the matter to the notice of the Queen.
For none knew better than William Shakespeare, that she was a woman of
harsh and imperious temper.

Thus was it beyond all things necessary that a proof of Heriot’s
innocence should be found. The playwright sat late that evening in a
secluded corner of the inn parlor, anxiously discussing with “Signor
Bandinello” every aspect of his unhappy case. It was true that he
deemed it wise to withhold all mention of the falconer’s visit and
the sinister news he had brought. Shakespeare was convinced that such
information had only to come to the ears of Gervase Heriot for the
fugitive to give himself up at once. This was not the kind of man to
allow another to suffer in his place.

Many were the questions with which the player plied Gervase, in the
hope of finding some way out of this tragic coil. The natural starting
point of this search for a means of escape was the presence in that inn
of the man Grisewood. In a sense, it would almost seem that the hand of
providence lurked in such a coincidence. But how to turn it to account,
that was the problem.

Would it be possible to make him play false his ignoble partner, the
man Simon Heriot? A very little reflection convinced Shakespeare
that any such hope was vain. To begin with, nothing was less likely
than that Grisewood would run the risk of putting his neck in a noose
by confessing the truth; again, having very recently experienced the
thrust of the sword of “the Italian music master,” he had now the best
of reasons for nursing an implacable hatred against the man whose life
he had sworn away.

From a consideration of the man lying upstairs sick with the pain of an
ugly wound, it was a natural transition to the sole author and inspirer
of the whole tragic business. The house of Simon Heriot was but ten
miles away. And if hope of any kind was to be derived from the nearness
of the chief actors in the sordid drama, it seemed to lie in this fact.

Quite apart from the pass of Sir John Feversham, the playwright was too
wise a man to approve the wild scheme that Gervase had formed, which
indeed was the cause of his return to Oxford. The risk would be great,
the gain slight and uncertain. But indirectly, it was Gervase’s crude
plan which now set the subtle brain to work. Many were the questions
Shakespeare asked touching the character, the habits, the mode of life
of Simon Heriot.

Among other things he learned was that this man was of a morbid
imagination, holding himself aloof from his kind. Of late, he had mixed
but little in the world. It was even thought by some that his mind had
at last turned against itself, and that it had begun to show signs of a
failing sanity.

It was not at first that the significance of these things revealed
themselves to the playwright. It was not at first that he realized the
use to which they might be put. Unconsciously, however, they were
stored in his brain against the time they should be cast into the
crucible of its invention.

Shakespeare learned much that evening from his talk with Gervase
Heriot. Keen as had been his pity for him from the moment he had first
heard his tragic history, their present intercourse deepened it rather
than made it less. He was quick to recognize the depth and the valor of
this young man’s soul, and that of the great-hearted girl who had dared
all to save him from the scaffold. Theirs was a wonderful story, all
compact of the very life-blood of drama. And when Shakespeare was told
very simply that upon the arrival of that hour in which they could no
longer hope to put off their foes, they had a plan whereby they might
die together, such a declaration had the power to thrill the heart of
one who spent his life in the devising of plays.

Long they talked together. On the one side was an intense sympathy, a
fervent pity; on the other, a clear and manful courage that was not
afraid to trust its instincts. And in this case those instincts were to
put implicit faith in this stranger by the wayside, the power of whose
personality was so compelling.

It happened about midnight, while Gervase and the player still talked
together, that a traveler came into the inn parlor. Shakespeare saw at
once that it was the falconer returned weary and despondent from his
quest. The man came over to where they sat. His face and bearing were
very tragic.

“You don’t happen to have seen anything of those gypsies I spoke to you
about?” he said to the player.

Shakespeare shook his head.

“I have lost all track of them now,” said the falconer. “My belief is,
they are somewhere in Oxford. At least, they were last seen outside
this inn. And, in any case, I can go no farther to-night.”

“What gypsies are you seeking, friend?” asked Gervase.

The falconer and he had only seen each other once, and then only for a
moment. Thus neither knew who the other was. The falconer gave a brief
description of those whom he sought, but it was explicit enough to tell
Gervase that Anne and himself were the objects of his quest.

“What might you be wanting with them?” asked Gervase.

“It is a long story,” said the falconer. “I am too weary to tell it
to-night. But to-morrow, perhaps.”

Thereupon, he went out of the room. Shakespeare was much relieved to
see him go. But the man’s inopportune return had much increased the
difficulties of the situation.

“I have seen that man before,” said Gervase, “yet, for my life, I
cannot think where. And I have not the least doubt that it is my
brother and I he is seeking. To-morrow, I must have a talk with him.”

“Might it not be well,” said the player, “first to find out whether he
is a friend or an enemy.”

“In any case, he is not likely to recognize me in this guise,” said
Gervase.

“It would be wise to take no chances, my friend,” said the player.

The task he had set himself was now beginning to press very heavily
upon William Shakespeare. He well knew it would be fatal to any plans
he might evolve if the fugitives learned what the business was that
had sent the falconer scouring the country-side. He must do all that
lay in his power to prevent the man conversing with Gervase Heriot. And
he must also contrive a means to keep Anne Feversham out of his sight,
lest he recognize her in spite of her boy’s dress.

Thus it was in a state of dire perplexity that the player sought his
bed that night.




CHAPTER XXIV


MR. WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE rose early, after a troubled night. Throughout
its interminable watches his mind had been dominated by the necessity
of keeping the falconer and the fugitives apart. It was almost certain
that the man would recognize his young mistress. And if this came to
pass, she would learn at once her father’s tragic peril.

Soon or late, the news would have to be told her. At least, that
was the view Shakespeare had now come to hold. But this was not the
season for the Constable’s daughter to learn what had happened. As the
playwright had lain sleepless that night in his bed, with the eager
brain racing courser-like over the whole matter, the core of a plan had
come to him. It was little more than a shadow at present. It had yet
to take shape, yet to acquire a hue of reality, but it might be that
under providence it would develop into a scheme that could offer some
hope of their deliverance. Yet he must have time in which to mature it;
and if by a mischance the fugitives learned at this moment Sir John
Feversham’s peril, nothing was more likely than that a self-sacrificing
impulse would cause them to give themselves up to justice before
anything could be done to help them.

All that day the falconer hung disconsolate about the Crown Tavern.
There was reason to believe that the fugitives were still in the
vicinity of Oxford, but for the time being all further trace of them
had failed. A number of persons in and about the town appeared to have
seen the young gypsies. Among others, John Davenant, the landlord of
the Crown, had a clear recollection of having seen them early the
previous day on the bench outside the tavern door. They could not be
far away, yet for the present the falconer’s inquiries yielded no
result.

Shakespeare was careful to keep Gervase and Anne out of the man’s way.
He hardly let them out of his sight, and during the performance that
afternoon they were given a secluded corner in one of the galleries
where they could enjoy the play without being seen by the audience.

The piece was “Romeo and Juliet,” and its success was as great as that
which had been gained on the previous day by “The Merchant of Venice.”
News of that brilliant performance had spread, so that the press in
the inn yard was greater than ever, there being hardly room to squeeze
another soul inside. This play was finely acted, and it was received
with bursts of rapturous applause.

It was part of the scheme that was being formed in Shakespeare’s mind
that Anne should play _Rosalind_ before the Queen. He knew that such an
innovation would be perilous, and he foresaw that it would arouse the
opposition of his colleagues. But that shy and slender grace was the
ideal of his fancy. He knew now that it was the sight of her in hawking
dress in the tailor’s shop that had set his mind upon the forest of
Arden. Parflete was an efficient actor, but no member of the company
could have the charm and delicacy of this gracious thing, if only she
could be taught to play the part at so short a notice.

The playwright was too astute even to tell Burbage of the fantastic
scheme that had come to lurk in his mind. But he lost no time in giving
Anne a copy of the play to read. She declared herself enchanted by it.
It was not then, however, that he ventured to reveal to her his design.
And, in the meantime, perils were multiplying.

The man Grisewood remained three days in the privacy of his chamber,
suffering much pain during that time in his disabled arm. And when at
last he emerged with his wound dressed in bandages, he hovered about
the tavern like a brooding and vengeful presence. If ever a man might
be said to be biding his hour in order to work mischief, this was he.
Yet for the present, it was little he could accomplish. Moreover, he
was constrained to keep a civil tongue in his head, since Richard
Burbage, who was no respecter of persons, was fain to inform him that
the horse-trough was still likely to be his academy of manners.

Grisewood, it appeared, had come to Oxford for a particular purpose.
That purpose was to seek out Simon Heriot, his partner in infamy. He
wished to inform him of the prisoner’s escape, which was not generally
known to the world, and incidentally to learn what prospect there was
of being able to replenish a depleted exchequer. This indeed was its
permanent condition, so far as Sir Robert Grisewood was concerned. But
now that his foul work was accomplished he looked to it to provide a
source of revenue for many years to come.

In the course of the day Grisewood chanced to inquire of John Davenant,
in the falconer’s hearing, whether he could direct him to Greenfield
Manor, the house of Simon Heriot The falconer’s attention was
attracted, and presently he entered into conversation with Grisewood.
Both men, at first, were not a little wary of each other. The business
of neither enabled them to open their hearts to a chance acquaintance,
but a few cautious questions judiciously answered were enough to prove
their common interest in a matter which concerned them both very deeply.

Grisewood had more cunning, and therefore less frankness, than the
falconer. Thus he asked questions rather than answered them. And it was
not long before he had learned the nature of the falconer’s mission.

Markham, to be sure, was very loth to tell his story. But once upon the
track of it, Grisewood was not a man to be gainsaid. On a pretence of
being able to tell far more than he knew, he drew the main particulars,
word by word, out of the reluctant falconer. Thus he learned the manner
of Gervase Heriot’s escape, and how the fugitive was roaming the
country-side in the company of Sir John Feversham’s daughter.

This was high and strange news for Grisewood. Indeed, Markham was one
of the very few who knew this fact. Not even the Queen herself was
aware of it.

Had Markham been in a mood less desperate, he would not have divulged
the share of his young mistress in the prisoner’s escape. But this man
had affected to know far more of the matter than, in point of fact, he
did know; besides, the falconer did not see how any words or any act
of his could make the affair more terrible than it was. His one desire
was to overtake the fugitives in order that he might inform his young
mistress of her father’s dire peril. This was neither more nor less
than the morbid craving of an overburdened conscience. It would not be
at his instance even if Gervase Heriot was given up to justice. His
wish was merely to make known to the prisoner all that had occurred,
and then leave any further action in his hands. By this means the
falconer hoped to rid himself of the stain of his master’s blood.

As soon as Grisewood had heard the falconer’s story he brought the
whole force of his cunning mind to bear upon the matter.

“You say, my friend, this traitor and Sir John’s young daughter in a
boy’s dress are roaming the country in the guise of gypsies?”

“That I do,” said Markham.

Grisewood strove to amplify in his mind a picture the falconer’s story
had conjured up in it. At last he was able to do this.

“By God’s life!” he said, “that was the pair of vagabonds I saw in the
company of that accursed play-actor at the tavern door on the morning I
came here.”

“Why do you call him accursed?” said Markham, remembering with a pang
that this player was a man in whom he had already confided.

“Why do I call him accursed?” said Grisewood. “All the world knows him
for a notorious rogue, as are all men of his sort. And I’ll wager a
golden angel he is concealing these fugitives in order to serve some
purpose of his own.”

“But why should he conceal them,” said the falconer, “when there is a
large sum on the head of Mr. Heriot?”

“A large sum, eh! The rogue may not know that.”

It was more to the purpose, perhaps, that the rogue who spoke had
not known it. He grew silent. In this business he must go cautiously
indeed. It might be possible for one who lived by his wits to take
profit from this strange business. At least, in his own mind, he was
reasonably sure of two things. The first was that the fugitives were
near at hand, the other that the play-actor was in a position to throw
light on their whereabouts.

The effect of this conversation was to keep Sir Robert Grisewood very
wideawake, and also to implant the seed of distrust in the mind of
Markham. It might be, after all, that the player was not so open and
honest as he seemed. At any rate, the falconer determined to watch him
narrowly. With that end in view he marked all that Shakespeare did. And
he soon found more food for his suspicions.

Close observation of the player’s comings and goings enabled Markham to
learn that there was a certain room in the upper part of the inn, which
claimed a large share of his attention. Much of Shakespeare’s time
was spent in it. Another person who had recourse to it was a certain
tall man profusely endowed with a beard and moustachios, said to be a
foreigner, who had lately joined the Lord Chamberlain’s Company. He
was reputed to be a swordsman of much skill, and in proof of it he had
lately given Grisewood a thrust through the arm.

The falconer was able to learn that this man, an Italian who went by
the name of Bandinello, had a son. And although he, too, had joined
the Lord Chamberlain’s Company, and was staying at the Crown, Markham
found it impossible to get a sight of him. For one thing, neither of
these Italians took their meals with the rest of the players in the
dining-parlor, but as the falconer contrived to learn, these were
served to them in this upper chamber.

This fact deepened Markham’s suspicions. He did not think, well,
however, to confide them to Grisewood. Inquiry of the landlord had been
sufficient to fix a very evil reputation upon the man. And it had also
served, in a measure, to reassure Markham in respect of the player.
The landlord, who seemed a shrewd and honest fellow enough, had no
hesitation in affirming that William Shakespeare was a very upright man.

Markham kept to himself his growing belief that the player, for
purposes of his own, was concealing the fugitives. But the falconer,
once engaged by this train of thought, began to grow more and more
certain that he had good ground for his suspicion. A close scrutiny,
moreover, convinced him that Signor Bandinello was by no means the
individual he gave himself out to be.

Upon reaching this conclusion, Markham determined on a bold course.
By hook or by crook, he would get a sight of this boy who was kept so
close. Yet only one means seemed to offer of doing this. He must choose
a favorable moment, and boldly invade this private room. Doubtless the
best time would be when the players were assembled at supper in the
dining-parlor.

In accordance with this plan he watched a servant ascend with a tray of
food, and then a few minutes later he walked fearlessly into the room.

As John Markham had surmised would be the case, he found two persons
seated at supper. One was the so-called Italian music master, and the
other was doubtless the person who had passed as his son. But, with
a single glance of an almost terrified swiftness, the falconer was
able to pierce the disguise. For all her close-clipt curls and her
boy’s dress, the second occupant of the room was undoubtedly his young
mistress.

In spite of the fact that the falconer was fully prepared for the
discovery he had made, he uttered a cry.

Signor Bandinello sprang to his feet.

“What is your pleasure?” he asked sharply, and in an English as pure as
any man need wish to use.

For an instant, the two men stood looking at one another blankly, while
Anne’s dismay was so great that she could neither speak nor move. But
each of these men had recognized the other already.

Beyond a doubt this was the man the falconer sought. Also this was the
servant of Sir John Feversham, whom Gervase had encountered in the
meadow.

Gervase laid his hand to his sword.

“Nay, sir,” said Markham, simply. “I am here as your friend, and
as--and as the humble servant of my mistress.”

The sound of the falconer’s voice broke the spell that had been laid
upon Anne. She rose from the table, and in spite of all that she had
undergone of suffering, something of the old imperiousness was in her
tone.

“What do you here, John Markham?”

“I bring news, mistress.”

“Of whom?”

“I bring news of your father, mistress.”

“Of my father!”

It seemed almost too great an effort for Anne to cast back her mind to
the stern man whose very existence she had nearly forgotten. In the
stress of those terrible weeks, which had called for all that she had
of endurance, her former life had grown so vague, so remote that it
was almost as if it had never been.

“What of my father?”

Tragedy unspeakable was in the falconer’s face. For the moment, a power
outside himself forbade his answering the question. Days and nights had
he given to this quest, that a load of misery might be taken from his
heart. But now that at last his tireless wanderings had achieved their
purpose, a force beyond his own will held him captive.

The falconer knew as he gazed at his young mistress that it was her
life he was about to sacrifice in order to save his master’s. It was
her youth and her high devotion in the scale, against one who had lived
the flower of his years. Surely it behoved him to have a care.

“What of my father?”

The man shook his head impotently.

“Is he dead?”

“No, mistress, he is not dead.”

But in the falconer’s tone was that which sent a chill to the heart of
Sir John Feversham’s daughter. In spite of himself, Markham had told
her that which he would now have concealed.

“My father is in peril?”

Again there was silence. But the woman’s swift instinct all too soon
divined its meaning.

“In peril. And it is because--because----!”

A shudder went through her veins. She buried her face in her hands.

A dreadful anguish came upon the falconer. Any words he would have
spoken died on his lips.

In the midst of this unhappy scene Shakespeare entered the room. His
eye fell on the somber figure of the falconer. And then he saw the
piteous face of Anne.

“Oh, what have you done!” The player’s bitterly reproachful words were
heard only by the falconer.

Markham shook his head dismally.

Gervase turned a distracted face upon the player.

“This man is concealing something,” he said. “What it is, I do not
know. Perhaps you can tell us.”

In spite of the fact that Markham’s presence in the room had taken
Shakespeare altogether by surprise, he seemed to realize the situation
almost at once. Gervase Heriot’s air of bewilderment and the falconer’s
look of pitiful irresolution served to make it clear that the man’s
will had failed when it came to the telling of his story.

But it was equally clear to that powerful intelligence that Anne had
come very near to divining the grim truth. She was the picture of woe.
And her distress could only proceed from one cause.

“You say my father is in peril!” Heedless of the player’s presence her
words were addressed to John Markham. “And it is because of me.”

The falconer did not answer. But his white face answered for him.

“Tell me all, John Markham. I must, I will know all.”

In the presence of that instancy of will which now as ever held the
falconer in thrall, he could not do less than obey. It was in vain that
the player sought to check him.

In a few broken, brief words, the dismal story was told.

“Sir John lies in the Tower, mistress, in peril of his life. He is
accused of complicity in his prisoner’s escape. On Monday next, as I
understand, he is to be brought to his trial. And it is likely to go
hard with him if he makes no effort to clear himself. And that, I am
sure, he will not do.”

Gervase interposed sharply.

“Why do you say Sir John Feversham will not attempt to clear himself?”

“For the reason, sir,” said the falconer, gravely and simply, “that in
such a case as this, it would not be my master’s character.”

“How can you possibly know that?” asked Gervase.

The falconer shook his head sadly.

“You are not acquainted with my master,” he said. “Even to save his
life, he is not the man to tell all that he knows of this matter.”

“That is to say,” said Gervase, “he has withheld a certain fact from
the Queen?”

“Yes.”

Despair closed upon Gervase and Anne. They did not need to be told that
Sir John Feversham had taken upon himself the whole responsibility for
his prisoner’s escape, and that not a word had crossed his lips in
regard to the share his daughter had in it.

One thought sprang at once to the minds of the fugitives. It was
impossible in such circumstances to leave Sir John to his fate. All the
laws of honor, of filial duty forbade such a course.

“Oh, why did you tell them!” said the player to John Markham. The too
sensitive soul felt the stab of tragedy in its inmost fiber.

“It was right that he should,” said Gervase. “It was his bounden duty.”

Gervase had grown as pale as death, but already resolve had braced his
will. He saw at once that only one course was open to him, and that was
the one the player himself had foreseen.

Yet no issue could have been more tragic. It was death for Gervase, and
in the circumstances of the case, it was also death for Anne. All this
the player understood, and even the thrice unhappy falconer seemed to
realize it.

Gervase’s mind was soon made up. He would go at once to London and
surrender himself to the Queen. He would start that night or at dawn at
the latest, since it seemed to him there was not an hour to be lost.

The player, however, had only to learn this impetuous resolve, in order
to declare himself strongly averse from it. A plan which promised some
hope of deliverance, a very slender one, it was true, had been taking
shape in his mind for three days past. Any such precipitancy of action
would destroy it. Therefore, he entreated Gervase to defer a step that
must prove irretrievably fatal until such time as his scheme might have
a chance to mature.

Shakespeare well knew how hazardous, indeed how fantastic his plan was.
And he was far too honest a man to promise more than its desperate
character warranted. But he did all that he could to dissuade Gervase
from his intention. He implored the young man not to act until that day
week, at which time the Lord Chamberlain’s men had to appear before the
Queen. It might then be possible to gain her ear. Gervase, however,
would not consent to this. His thoughts were dominated completely by
the peril of a brave and chivalrous man. Indeed, it was as much as the
player could do to persuade him to defer his departure for London until
the next day.

Finally, Shakespeare was able to wring a reluctant promise from Gervase
that he would not act upon his resolve the following morning, until
such time as they had met to discuss it again. And for the time being,
at any rate, that was the utmost the play-actor could contrive.




CHAPTER XXV


THERE was little sleep that night either for William Shakespeare or
for Gervase Heriot. The early morning found them together in the inn
garden. And as they walked up and down its box-bordered alleys, they
talked long and very earnestly and in a manner utterly heedless of
their surroundings.

In this last matter, they were unlucky. Several of the tavern windows
overlooked the garden, and one at least was open wide. This belonged
to the room which was occupied by the man Grisewood, who lay sleepless
on a comfortless pillow, still tormented by his wound. Unable to rest,
he chanced to rise from his couch in the early hours, and thrust his
aching head out of the window in order to get a breath of fresh air.

His attention was caught at once by the sound of voices and of
footsteps on the gravel path below. Then it was he saw the play-actor
in deep conversation with the man who had run him through the arm. The
sight was enough to summon all that Grisewood had of cunning, and in
his case, as it happened, this was a commodity of which nature had been
lavish.

At once, he knelt down by the casement, in order that he might see
without being seen. Then he listened very intently. The process was
irritatingly difficult He was only able to hear brief, disjointed
fragments of the conversation that was passing below. But it was
continued long enough to enable the listener to weave into some kind of
a context the few scraps of talk which he was able to glean.

Without any sort of doubt, the man who had run him through the arm
was Gervase Heriot in a cunning disguise. Such a thrill of joy passed
through the heart of the listener as almost to compensate for the pain
and indignity he had recently undergone. It would appear that the
fugitive was bent upon a course of action from which the play-actor was
doing all in his power to dissuade him. Exactly what it was that was
passing between them, Grisewood could not for the life of him make out.
Long they talked together as they slowly paced the garden, yet even
when they left it at last, the listener was unable to gather the full
gist of their conversation.

Nevertheless, he returned to his bed a very well satisfied man.
Opportunity for revenge lay under his hand. Moreover, he hoped to be
able to pay off his score with the player. And even beyond this doubly
welcome prospect, there was the further consolation of the high price
that had been set on the head of a condemned traitor.

These prospects were very dazzling in the sight of Sir Robert
Grisewood. And such scope did they offer that gentleman for the
exercise of his peculiar faculties, that he was almost afraid he would
not be able to grasp them to the full. He must not act hastily. Let him
give the whole force of his mind to the great possibilities of revenge
that were spread before it. Let him strike at his leisure, and only
after ample consideration of the case in all its bearings. Justice,
full and complete, must be done to the really wonderful opportunity
that had been given him.

In the meantime, Shakespeare’s long conversation with the fugitive in
the inn garden had borne fruit. With infinite difficulty had he been
able to persuade the young man to forego his surrender to the law for
that day, at least. And with even this small concession, the player was
not dissatisfied, for it seemed that during the watches of the night
the scheme in his mind had developed considerably.

Its nature was certainly very complex and hazardous. And the player
asked of Gervase that he would trust him to carry it out without
calling upon him to furnish details. Shakespeare desired the young man
to await the issue of his plan with an open mind. And as there was all
for Gervase to gain, and there was nothing he could lose, and as he had
already learned to have faith in this man who had certainly played the
part of a friend, he consented to do the will of the actor, and at the
same time to ask as few questions as need be.

It was a strange situation. And if Gervase had not an implicit faith in
the player, it could never have arisen. But the man’s intense sympathy
wrought upon him. And, after all, it was not a matter of his own life
alone, or even of the life of Sir John Feversham. He had to consider
that of the girl who had dared and done so much.

Thus, for one day more, he was willing to defer his surrender to the
Queen. And to this he was impelled by the knowledge that whatever
course he took, it would not now be possible to avoid bringing Sir John
Feversham to his trial. The law must inevitably take its course, but
there would still be time and opportunity to save the Constable even
after he was condemned.

It had been Grisewood’s intention to pay his visit to Greenfield Manor
that day. But the discovery he had made caused him to alter his plan of
action. He felt he must take time to consider the new position which
had arisen. Therefore, he decided not to see Simon Heriot at once. It
would be well, he thought, to stay where he was in order that he might
watch affairs closely and gain a further knowledge of that which was
taking place.

Delays, however, are dangerous. Grisewood was not aware of the fact
that his change of plan was very welcome to the play-actor. Indeed,
nothing could have better suited Shakespeare’s design. From the many
inquiries he had recently made in regard to Simon Heriot, there was
good reason to suppose that the man believed his nephew to be dead. And
as this belief was essential to the fantastic design that was maturing
in the subtle brain of this maker of plays, it was beyond all things
necessary that, for the present, it should not be disturbed.

Thus when, in the course of that morning, Shakespeare learned from the
landlord that Grisewood had decided not to visit Greenfield Manor until
the next day a weight of anxiety was taken from his mind. Nothing could
have accorded better with his purpose. Moreover, it put him in great
heart for his enterprise, and provided a further reason for its being
carried through without delay.

To be sure, the scheme was whimsical, extravagant, fantastic. It was of
a kind that could only have sprung from a daringly original invention.
And perhaps only the optimism of one whose life was largely that of
the fancy could have expected it to yield any material result. But it
was with the zest of a schoolboy that the playwright drew his friend,
Burbage, aside before that morning was out, and over a tankard of
October ale with a toast in it, inquired “whether he was ripe for a
midnight frolic?”

“Ripe as a medlar, my old lad of Stratford-on-Avon in Warwickshire,”
said the tragedian, heartily.

“Then we will give what we are pleased to call our minds to a
stratagem, dear shrew, which I hope we may be able this night to put on
a dark knave.”

“I care not so long as there is mirth in it,” said the tragedian.

“Mirth enough in it, I promise you, if we can but draw this badger out
of his hole. But we must go well armed, in case of trouble, and we must
have horses for a journey ten miles out and home.”

“What! more Charlecote adventures?”

“Nay, you egregious mime, a thing of more account than a coney or two.
It is to save the life of an innocent man and, as we will hope, to lose
a foul knave his head.”

The tragedian, in accordance with a cautious, practical and sagacious
disposition, began to look dubious.

“I am by no means clear,” he said, “that Richard Burbage was designed
by nature for knight errantry.”

“No harm shall come of this adventure, I promise you. But all I ask is,
that your dove’s voice shall roar a little like the Nubian lion; and
that your large assemblance shall make us look valiant in the light of
the moon.”

“That will I promise, if I have but a flask of canary within me.”

“It is a choicely pretty stratagem. And if there is no miscarriage, I
think we may obtain a night’s honest amusement at the expense of one
who looks not to provide it.”

“What is your plan, you mad maker of plays? And what is its aim and
object?”

“All in a good season you shall be told. But first, we must prick our
band for the wars. I name myself captain generalissimo, and I name
Richard Burbage, a large man, frowardly given, for my ancient. And for
my squire, I name young Parflete, whose light limbs and smooth face and
gentle air make innocence herself seem a baggage. And then I will name
Lowin, an honest, good fellow with wit enough not to ask questions, and
stout Kemp who is a wag but not a fool, and of course Heriot, this poor
ill-used young man whose life I will save, I am determined upon it.”

“All the same, my William, I would learn the nature of your stratagem,”
said Burbage, tenaciously.

“Nay, Richard, possess your soul in patience for the nonce. The
stratagem is a good stratagem, else may I never drink sack out of a
bombard again. But I must now seek young Mr. Heriot and assemble horses
for our troop.”

It was part of the man’s character, and a strong part, that when once
the mind was fully aroused, it could combine the power of action with
an infinite faculty of invention. It was not always easy for him to see
his way at the beginning of an enterprise. Like so many upon whom the
heavy burden of imagination has been laid, the will was apt to be weak
at times. But if only the occasion called imperiously, he had a power
of concentration that enabled him to overcome the indecision which is
the cruel curse that nature has laid upon the thinker.

Now that William Shakespeare had conceived the high project of saving
the life of an innocent man, mind and will were working in full harmony
to compass this end. He saw clearly what had to be done; and a blend of
many high qualities lent him the power to conceive and to carry out a
scheme which few men would have had the audacity to undertake.

He bade Gervase and Anne be of good heart. Yet he withheld the main
particulars of his design. He told them merely that his purpose was to
ride at sundown to the house of Simon Heriot, that was some ten miles
off, in the company of Burbage, Kemp and other of the players. It would
be necessary for Gervase to accompany them. With a light of humor in
his eye, the playwright assured him that if fortune was kind he had a
plan that might prove very pleasant, whimsical and diverting to all
except him against whom it was to be directed.

“But, tell me, what it is, I pray you?” said Gervase.

Shakespeare shook his head.

“The hour is not yet,” he said. “I’ faith, it is one of those whimsical
matters which endure the performance better than the description. I
only ask that you trust me to the full and do my will, whatever it be;
and, for my part, I will promise that your case shall not be made in
anywise worse than it now is, and under Providence shall be made a good
deal better.”

Knowing so little of the plan, Gervase found it hard not to be
sceptical. But this man had already gained his confidence. He was
hardly likely to promise that which he had no prospect of being
able to perform. Moreover, there was no reason in the world why he
should put a trick upon one in so sorry a plight as Gervase, unless he
was an emissary of his enemies. And this the fugitive had no reason
to suppose. For had he not treated Anne and himself with unfailing
kindness, nay, with something beyond kindness--with a tenderness, a
delicacy of compassion which no gratitude could ever repay?

Shakespeare presently delivered a solemn charge to the
melancholy-visaged John Davenant, of whom there was a tradition
that he had never been known to smile.

“Right excellent host,” said the player, with a whimsical air, “I would
have you place at our disposal about the hour friend Phoebus enters
his cradle, the eight trustiest and lustiest steeds to be found in
this city. John Davenant, on your honor as a licensed victualler, do I
charge you to give the whole of your mind to this matter. An affair of
great pith and moment is toward as soon as the sun has gone down.”

“Is it that you are leaving us to-night, Will?” said the host of the
Crown Tavern, in some alarm.

“Nay, mine host. But a choice little pleasantry is afoot, and it
demands that all who bear a share in it should be well horsed.”

“Well, you are ever a mad faggot,” said John Davenant. “And a man never
knows what whimsey you will take next.”

“Peace, honest vintner. And upon your life as a famous Christian man,
do I charge you to do my behest.”

Thoroughly mystified, John Davenant went to carry out these
instructions, perhaps a trifle unwillingly. But he was an old friend
of William Shakespeare, and although a somber fellow enough on the
outside, there was a light of humor within. Besides, he had a very real
respect for the moving spirit of the Lord Chamberlain’s Company.




CHAPTER XXVI


GREENFIELD MANOR was a very old house about ten miles out of Oxford. It
lay in a secluded spot, but the road to London ran past the high walls
of its park. A heavy growth of trees surrounded the house itself, which
was in a state of neglect and disrepair.

A gloomy and forbidding place enough. The very atmosphere which
invested this mass of decaying stonework seemed to invite ghosts to
walk. Its chimneys rocked continually; its windows rattled. When the
vane over the decrepit stables swung in the wind of the summer night,
it was as if some lost soul was seeking to escape out of Hades.

As a fact, the house was certainly inhabited by a lost soul. Simon
Heriot, its master, lay in the belief that he had done his nephew to
death by a subtle, mean and cruel device. And no worthier purpose
than greed had been in his heart. It had been his life-long passion
to hold the fair manor and the broad lands in the west country, which
generations of his name had held before him. These, however, had
descended to the son of his elder brother. And the knowledge that there
was only one life intervening between him and his great ambition, in
the end, became too much for him.

The means to do ill deeds oft makes ill deeds done. It was by chance
that the design was unfolded to Simon Heriot of swearing away his
nephew’s life. But when occasion came to him he did not resist the
call. The pent-up forces of his covetous envy rose up and slew him.

If ever a man might be said to have sold himself to the devil, that
man was Simon Heriot. He had a cunning and subtle mind; moreover, he
was very well acquainted with the world in which he lived. He was
clever enough to make the entail of his nephew’s estates the price of
his testimony. And, indeed, it was no uncommon thing in that day to
reward those who brought and proved charges of high treason with the
property of the people they had hounded to the scaffold. The times
were very perilous for all men. The life of no man was safe. Black
hatred and superstitious fear of the Pope, and his emissaries were rife
throughout the land. In such circumstances, it was easy for a cunning
and unscrupulous man to remove a rival from his path by some form of
legal process. The character of the evidence was seldom tested. It was
enough if it served the purpose it had in view. Gervase Heriot was not
the first by many who had been done to death under the ready sanctions
of the law.

Howbeit, Simon Heriot, with all his knowledge of men and of the world,
was without knowledge of the power of God. As soon as the news was
brought to him that his nephew was condemned to the block, a singular
change came over his life. The success of his design gave him not
a crumb of satisfaction; indeed he took a morbid, an overmastering
distaste for the society of his fellows. He shut himself up in his
gloomy manor house with his old and stupid servants. He shunned the
light of day. His one desire was to avert his face from all men and
from the sight of Heaven.

A brooding lethargy fixed itself upon his soul. A kind of slow horror
stole into his brain. He could not settle his mind to anything. Asleep
or awake, he knew no peace. He would have undone his deed could he have
found the courage that such an act demanded.

This night was as many others. After a solitary meal in a large, dim,
comfortless room, Simon Heriot sat long at the table, staring straight
before him at the huge open fireplace, whose emptiness was like a
yawning chasm. At his elbow had been set a large flagon of wine, of
which he drank continually.

There was not a sound in the old house, save that made by an occasional
mouse behind the paneling. The servants had gone to bed; it was near
eleven o’clock of a perfectly still and moonless summer’s evening; and
Simon Heriot was alone with his thoughts.

Wine, it is true, did a little to soften their sting. But when the hand
of God has been laid upon a man, it is not amenable to human resources.
Behind that dull lethargy of spirit was a never-ceasing pressure.
Strange phantoms had begun to lurk on the edge of the outer darkness,
away beyond the flickering half-light of the candles on the table.

At last, in sheer fatigue, the unhappy man began to doze. Worn out
in mind and body, he fell presently into a troubled sleep. But his
unquietness of spirit would not let him rest. He awoke with a start.
There was a sense of a continual presence, unseen but all-pervading, in
the room.

He strained his eyes beyond the circle of light made by the candles set
on the table at which he sat. But away in the ghostly outer darkness
of the large room, he could discern no visible shape. He strove to fix
some faint and remote sound that thrilled in his ears. But, after all,
it was only the little sound of the summer wind stirring in the trees.

Again the jaded brain tried to pierce together the slender core of will
that might disperse these phantoms and perhaps enable it to sleep. But
it was not to be. Each night as he sat there, besieged by this horror
that had entered his soul, the will grew more inert. There was a faint
voice within that had begun to whisper to him that he would never sleep
again.

Yes, it was true. He would never sleep again. He was tormented by
unseen phantoms. Never again would he know peace in this life and
perhaps never in the life to come.

Once again he strained his ears to listen. It was only the little voice
of the summer wind in the wide chimney-place. All was silence save
for that. Yet there was an abiding sense of an unseen, all-pervading
presence in the room. And then, quite suddenly, without warning of any
kind, a thing happened that made the very soul of Simon Heriot recoil.

He was sitting at the table, his head resting on his hand. His back
was to the wide chimney-place, but as he sat his body was half turned
towards it. On his right hand was a long, low casement. It was
curtainless, but was covered on the outside by a wooden shutter. On
his left hand, at the opposite end of the room, was another casement
precisely similar except that it was smaller.

All at once, without warning and without any apparent cause, the
shutters of the right-hand casement were flung to the ground. Simon
Heriot turned his head with a startled cry. His wild eyes stared out
into the night. At first, he could see nothing but the cavernous
darkness. Yet as he was still gazing, a light was flashed suddenly
across the window, and then he saw that a white, ghostly face was
pressed against the pane and was looking into the room.

The apparition was so real, so vivid, that Simon Heriot rose half
swooning with terror and walked across to the window.

“Who are you?” he gasped.

He had no need to ask. It was the face of the young man, his nephew,
whom, as he believed, he had done to death.

“Who are you?” shrieked the wretched man.

He stumbled forward to the window. But when he came there all was dark
again. The light was gone, and the face of his nephew had vanished.

Like a lost soul, trembling upon the verge of unreason, he stood at the
window gazing far out into the void. But there was only the darkness of
the night and the little voice of the summer wind. Yet if he was not
in a dream, or if he was not yet bereft of his wits, the shutters were
indubitably prone on the ground.

After a moment, the unhappy man turned away from the window, unable
longer to endure that cavern of darkness which confronted him. Yet,
hardly had he done so, when the shutters which covered the window at
the other end of the long room were flung to the ground with a violent
crash.

Simon Heriot screamed with terror. There again was the flash of the
light. There again was the face of his nephew pressed against the
window. Like one possessed, the unhappy man stumbled across the room to
this other window. But by the time he had reached it, the light and the
face were gone.

There was nothing but the night. All was silence. And there was nought
to be seen out in the darkness. He uttered another wild scream of
terror.

Shuddering in every vein, he withdrew his eyes from the window. As he
sought the table for support, he almost fell. And then as he reached
it, his heart seemed to stop beating. For a voice deep and terrible
filled the room, echoing and re-echoing in it, making its spacious
gloom resound.

“Simon Heriot!”

He heard his name.

“Simon Heriot!”

The voice of the unseen re-echoed high in the wide chimney-place. The
heart of the unhappy wretch was already dead within him.

“Simon Heriot has murdered sleep!”

In a frenzy that seemed to tear his soul in pieces, he pressed his
hands to his ears that they might be closed against the sound. But it
was in vain. No human agency had the power to shut out those terrible
words, or the awful voice that gave them utterance.

“Simon Heriot, if ever you would sleep again, attend that which is said
to you.”

With the shred of will that remained to him, the guilty man strung all
his faculties in order to heed the words that were spoken.

“Do you attend, Simon Heriot.” The voice was low, deep and terrible.
“Do you take a candle and sit at yonder table, upon which materials for
writing are set, and do you write as you are now directed.”

It was true that quill, inkhorn and foolscap were laid out on a small
table at the other end of the room. At the beck of that which he was
powerless to disobey, the unhappy man tottered very slowly towards the
table. After a moment of indecision, he sat down and took up the quill.
He was as one in a dream, except that his head seemed to be bursting.

“Simon Heriot, write as you are directed.”

The terrible voice had now grown so loud and so compelling, that
it seemed to tear his brain asunder. When he took up the pen, his
trembling fingers could hardly hold it.

Very slowly and very clearly, the voice then uttered the following:

  “I, Simon Heriot, in the presence of Almighty God and with the shadow
  of death upon me, hereby solemnly declare, that I have caused to be
  borne to our Sovereign Lady the Queen, false testimony in the matter
  of my nephew, Gervase Heriot. I further declare that I suborned
  three men, Robert Grisewood, John Nixon and Gregory Bannister by
  name, to bear false testimony touching the complicity of the said
  Gervase Heriot in the Round House Plot, by reason of which alleged
  complicity the said Gervase Heriot has been condemned to death. In
  the presence of Almighty God, and as I shortly hope for eternal
  rest, I do hereby most solemnly   avow what I have written to be the
  truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Given under my hand
  this second day of July, 1599--Simon Heriot.”

Under the goad of terror, the guilty man gathered every fragment of his
crumbling will in order that he might set pen to paper. No less slowly
than the grim voice pronounced the words, Simon Heriot wrote them down
with a kind of automatic precision. It was as if his highly wrought
state had become susceptible to a process of hypnotism.

When at last the task was finished and he had signed the document which
made full confession of his crime, he was commanded to open a window
and to fling out the paper into the night.

He would have had neither the strength nor the courage to do this of
his own volition. But the dread voice compelled him. He rose from the
writing-table, but now such was his condition that he could hardly
stand. A palsy was on his limbs; he was as one who has lost all control
of his mind.

“Take heed, Simon Heriot.”

He knew not whence the voice came, yet a power beyond himself compelled
implicit obedience. Scarcely able to walk, he tottered toward the
casement at the other end of the wide room.

He was destined never to reach it. With a dismal cry, he stopped
midway. The paper fluttered out of his hand. Suddenly, he fell face
down on the stone floor, a slight foam on his lips.




CHAPTER XXVII


HARDLY had this thing come to pass, when a number of startled faces
appeared on the outer side of the shutterless window. Shaking and
rattling did not serve to force an entrance, but by the time the
combined pressure of four or five vigorous and determined men had been
applied, the framework began to yield. Very soon they had made their
way into the room.

Simon Heriot was dead.

One glance at the horrible distorted face was enough to tell Gervase
Heriot what had occurred. There was no need for the young man to get
down on his knees, candle in hand, and loosen the man’s clothing. Simon
Heriot had already breathed his last.

The men who had come with Gervase into the room belonged one and all
to the Lord Chamberlain’s Company. The first of these was William
Shakespeare whose fantastically ingenious device had been fraught with
such tragic consequences. It had succeeded beyond hope or expectation.
Richard Burbage’s had been the voice which had re-echoed down the wide
chimney with such ghastly effect.

“Dead?” said the playwright, looking round at the circle of astonished
and half-terrified faces. And then he said, with a passionate
solemnity, with a look of terror in his own dark-glowing eyes, “God
rest his soul. His crime was black, but he has paid for it with usury.
God rest his unhappy soul.”

A chill of silence fell upon all who had entered the room. In a sense,
they had done this man to death, and perhaps that thought was even
more potent in their minds than the grim and awful tragedy they had
witnessed.

After a while, the spell was broken. Burbage picked up the paper that
had fallen to the floor. He examined it by the ghostly light of the
candles, and then handed it to the man who had caused it to be written.

It might have been supposed that the text would have been expressed
in a handwriting barely decipherable, but such was not the case. The
writing was sufficiently clear to bear no reasonable doubt of its
authenticity. By a process of hypnotic suggestion the man’s mind had
been strung up to a point beyond its natural powers, and it had not
given way until the last word had been written.

Shakespeare folded up the paper and put it in his pocket.

“I will bear this to the Queen myself,” he said.

In the meantime, some of the others had raised the body of Simon Heriot
from the ground and had laid it on a table. But Shakespeare bore no
part in all this. It was not that he was callous; it was simply that
the sight of death revolted him.

After the body had been placed on the table, one and all waited upon
the word of the leader of the enterprise, who had devised all that had
come to pass. But now his power seemed to have gone from him. Having
done so much more than he had meant to do, he was as one overborne by
the sense of his deed. He now confronted his fellow-players haplessly,
apparently not knowing what to do next or what advice to give.

As it happened, however, all further decision was taken out of his
hands. While one and all stood awaiting that masterful initiative that
was no longer at their service, the door of the room was opened very
stealthily, and two of the dead man’s servants entered. Each carried a
candle and a fowling-piece.

Both men were evidently in deadly fear of their lives, but a sense of
duty had prevailed with them over a desire for personal safety.

“How, now, you masterless rogues,” said one, who was the butler, in a
voice by no means valiant. “What do you here?”

Before it was possible to answer the question, the antiquated weapon he
carried went off with a loud report, which seemed to make the room rock
to its foundations, and half choked all those in it with the fumes of
smoke and gunpowder. It was the result of accident, certainly not of
design, but a cry arose from among the players.

“Oh, God!”

It was the voice of the young man Parflete.

“Put up your weapons, you fools,” cried Gervase.

The unlucky Parflete had fallen against the table. Anxiously they
crowded round the man who had been hit, while the butler and the old
serving man who was with him, seeing their master’s nephew of the
company, laid down their weapons.

The young actor had been hit in the arm. It hung helpless and bloody by
his side. Suddenly he fainted, and Gervase had only just time enough to
catch him in his arms.

William Kemp, the famous comedian and creator of the rôle of
_Falstaff_, who was one of those who had borne a part in this tragic
conspiracy, had the presence of mind to seize a horn of brandy that was
on the table. Having first, by a free application to his own throat,
been able to satisfy himself that the liquor was capable of stimulating
the heart’s action, he poured a goodly portion of it down the throat of
his wounded comrade.

There was virtue in this remedy. But the unlucky young player lay
shivering with pain in the arms of Gervase, while Burbage attended an
ugly wound with considerable skill.

First he cut away the dripping sleeve of the doublet with his clasped
knife. Then a basin of water was brought and he bathed the wound, and
finally bound up the arm tightly in a clean handkerchief. But by the
time this had been done, Parflete was again insensible.

In the meantime, the two servants had discovered that their master was
dead. And the horror of that discovery was increased by the presence of
his nephew, whom they had presumed to be dead also. Furthermore, they
were not acquainted with the black part their master had played. Thus
their grief and horror were perfectly sincere.

The arrival of what certainly appeared to be a lawless company of
lawless and masterless men, had plunged already the entire household
into a state of alarm. The cries and the noise of firearms had at once
aroused the rest of the indoor servants. In a few minutes, these had
come crowding into the room. And as soon as they had learned what had
occurred, matters began to take an ugly shape.

The steward of Simon Heriot, who had now appeared on the scene, was a
man of resolute character. He declared that he would hold in custody
those who had been responsible for his master’s death, notwithstanding
that one among them was his master’s nephew. Accordingly, he sent one
man to call the outdoor servants; he sent another to procure a horse
from the stables and ride with all haste to the nearest justice; also
he proclaimed the fact that he would suffer no man to escape.

In that, perhaps, although his intention was excellent, he was not
wise. The players, including Gervase and the falconer, mustered nine
men in all, against seven men and four women. To be sure, one of the
intruders was sorely disabled and would require the careful tendance of
his friends if he was to be brought securely away. But, in the matter
of arms, the advantage was with the players, inasmuch that most of them
were provided with swords, and they had only to fear one undischarged
fowling-piece and divers staves and short daggers.

Gervase now took command of affairs. He approached his uncle’s steward
coolly enough, for all that the man preserved a very threatening
attitude with his weapon pointed ominously at the players.

“Put it up, you curst fool!” said Gervase, roundly. “Haven’t you done
mischief enough already?”

“Not half the mischief you have done, sir,” said the man. “Come not an
inch nearer or I----”

Before the steward could complete his threat or carry it into effect,
Gervase suddenly struck up his arm. The piece went off with a
tremendous report. This time, happily, its contents were discharged
into the air.

In the midst of the smoke and the general confusion, Gervase flung
himself upon the steward and, with the strength and the address of
youth, soon wrenched the clumsy weapon from his hands. Then, with
a blow on the head from the butt of the weapon, he laid the man
insensible.

“Through the window, my friends,” he cried to his comrades. “Let us get
out of this while we have the chance.”

Gervase had now become the leader of the players--for a time at least.
Already he had shown that faculty of quick initiative which belongs
to the man of action. The others obeyed him instinctively. His swift
decision, and the manner in which his deed leaped with his thought,
showed them clearly enough that they would do well to follow him.

Burbage was first through the window. He was a powerful and active
man. He lifted out Parflete bodily and then, hoisting him on his broad
shoulders, began to run with him in the direction of the horses which
were tethered in the lane. It was well that the wounded actor was very
light of weight.

Meanwhile, the others were rendering a pretty good account of
themselves. A general mêlée had ensued, in which blows were given
freely and given as freely again. And in all this, Gervase was
foremost. Many shrewd knocks he delivered with the butt of his weapon,
and one of these undoubtedly saved Shakespeare a broken head. John
Markham, the falconer, also did considerable execution with the flat of
his short sword.

The onfall of the players had been so swift as to take Simon Heriot’s
servants by surprise. And, after all, the resistance they had to offer
was not very stout. Thus those who had forced so irregular an entry
were soon in excellent shape for making good their escape by way of the
window through which they had come.

The breach in the casement their entrance had caused was a large one.
And with far less difficulty than they had reason to expect were they
able to withdraw from the room. Also, they suffered no further casualty
beyond a few ill-directed blows that did them little hurt.

The dead man’s servants were less fortunate. Several were laid low,
although none of their injuries was serious. But these early mishaps
had killed any desire that might have lurked in the others to press
the conflict beyond the point of discretion. No very serious effort
was made to impede the flight of Gervase Heriot and his friends, whom
one and all of the dead man’s household honestly believed had done his
uncle to death.

It was not a difficult matter for the players to reach their horses
which had been left in the lane. Shakespeare, who was a good horseman,
and who had contrived to be well mounted, had the wounded man lifted on
to the front of his saddle.

Parflete was still very weak from loss of blood and the shock of his
wound. He was quite unable to take care of himself. But the playwright
was full of solicitude for the young man. Also it was fortunate that
they both rode light. Shakespeare, although well knit of figure, was
hardly more than a ten stone man.

The horses were soon untethered and their heads turned in the direction
of Oxford. No time was lost in making for the Crown. It was most likely
there would be the devil to pay for that evening’s tragic work. The
law would certainly be invoked against them; indeed, already it was
in process of being summoned. As far as the players themselves were
concerned, their chief hope was that none save Gervase Heriot had been
recognized. If that happened to be the case, and the young man could
lie perdu for a few days, the hue and cry might pass, always provided
that no evidence was forthcoming against the members of the Lord
Chamberlain’s Company.

Not a word was spoken as they rode to the Crown. The minds of all
were filled with a sense of vague horror. The sinister trick they had
put upon a blood-guilty man had turned to a grim tragedy. Full many a
grisly scene had these men enacted in the process of their calling.
Full many a scene of pity and terror had the master mind among them
devised. But never in all their play-acting had they approached the
sheer horror of the human soul which had been tormented so ruthlessly
that night.

It was in vain they reflected that even with his callous crime heavy
upon him they had not meant to do the man to death. The world was
undoubtedly a better place for his quittance; it was necessary that his
soul should be wrung to its extremity if an innocent man was to escape
the ax; but let them urge in extenuation all that was possible, and
there was still not one among them who would ever forget the dreadful
thing with which he had been face to face that night.

As they rode along the moonless lanes in the stifling silence of a
midsummer night, the weird shapes of the trees far spreading in their
heavy leafage seemed to affront their eyes with phantom shapes. The
eerie darkness that lay like a pall on the fields and woods and the
grim sentinel hedgerows oppressed them almost beyond endurance.

Never once did they ease the pace of their horses, not even to listen
for sounds of pursuit. And to more than one among that band of
conspirators, perhaps most of all to the mind of William Shakespeare,
it was a real, an unspeakable relief when a sudden bend in the dark
road showed two or three fugitive lights twinkling a little ahead where
Oxford lay.

Luckily, it was not a difficult matter to get through the city gate.
Still, it was necessary to knock up the porter, who rose from his couch
in no civil mood and asked why virtuous men rode so late. But a gold
angel that was thrown to him reassured him wonderfully.

They came into the city unmolested. And thus far there was never a sign
of pursuit. But they had a deep sense of relief when, at last, they
turned round by the Cornmarket and alighted under the oil lamp that had
been kept burning for them before the door of John Davenant’s hostelry.




CHAPTER XXVIII


PARFLETE was put to bed at once, and late as was the hour a chirurgeon
was sent for. He dressed the wound, and inclined to the opinion that
the limb might be saved. But the injury was so severe that weeks must
pass before the young actor could hope to appear again in the theater.

Now this accident and its consequences had filled Shakespeare with
consternation. On the Thursday following, but six days hence, the
new comedy was to be given by the Queen’s command in Richmond Park.
The chief female character, that of _Rosalind_, had been written and
designed for this rising young actor. It was impossible at such short
notice to fill his place. There was no other member of the company who
came near Parflete in fitness for the part. The author felt that much
depended on a graceful, slender and attractive _Rosalind_. It was with
such a personage ever in his mind that the play had been composed for
the delectation of an exacting critic.

The next morning, when the full extent of the calamity was known,
Shakespeare bitterly lamented the lack of judgment which had allowed
Parflete to bear a part in the perilous transactions of the night
before. It was vain to repine, but the playwright would now have given
much to be able to undo this grievous accident.

There was also another aspect of the case that filled him with concern.
Gervase Heriot had been recognized by his uncle’s steward. The aid of
the law must already have been invoked. If the young man remained at
the Crown, it was doubtful whether his present disguise would be a
sufficient concealment, and if taken he would certainly be charged with
the murder of his uncle. Not that that mattered particularly to one
already under sentence of death. But it might matter very much to those
who had associated themselves with the young man in the harebrained
enterprise which had ended so disastrously.

Truly the reflections of William Shakespeare were not of roseate hue
this morning. Looking back on the night’s adventure, it seemed to be
as grimly fantastic as a scene out of one of his own plays. When he
had planned the weird scene that had been enacted to the very letter
of his invention, he had had a very special object in view, yet he had
not looked to the matter to be pushed to that extremity. It was hardly
in human nature to mourn the occurrence, for the world was undoubtedly
well rid of a bad man. Moreover, the object of the playwright’s
audacious stratagem had been achieved. He held in his hands a paper,
which even if obtained by means so irregular, was enough to clear
Gervase Heriot, always provided that the Queen could be brought to
reconsider his case. But the feeling now uppermost in the mind of
the dramatist was one of distress. He feared that he had drawn his
companions into one of those sinister transactions in which no man in
that age could afford to be involved.

Two things must be done, and they must be done speedily. It was
imperative for the Lord Chamberlain’s players to leave Oxford at once.
And an efficient substitute for Parflete must be found immediately if
the comedy was to be given in its integrity before the Queen on the
Thursday following.

In the stress of these urgent matters, the playwright took counsel of
Richard Burbage. That worthy was in the middle of a substantial if
belated breakfast.

“In the first matter, I agree with you,” he said, upon hearing what
his colleague had to say. “There will be security for none of us until
we are out of Oxford, and perhaps not even then. As to who is to play
_Rosalind_ now that Parflete is sick, heaven help us but I know not.”

“Tarbert might play the part,” said the author of the comedy. “He has a
light womanish voice, but then his legs do not match and he has no more
grace than a soused mackerel. As I see my sweet _Rosalind_, she should
be all grace and limberness, all delicacy, tenderness and fantasy.”

“Yes, I grant you it would be asking too much of Tarbert,” said the
tragedian, addressing himself very seriously to a quart of ale. “It
would be asking too much of any of us except Parflete. I am afraid,
William Shakespeare, this is going to be a sad detriment to your play.”

The playwright agreed.

“With a good _Rosalind_,” he said, “the play might pass. But without a
good _Rosalind_, it is like to be a plaguy poor thing. I confess I had
Parflete in my mind from the first. The lad has not yet had scope for
his talent. He is a youth of most excellent refined wit and very neat
and comely besides. I am sure if Gloriana could but have seen him as
_Rosalind_ to young Warburton’s _Celia_, she would have been very well
pleased with him.”

“Yes, and with the play, too,” said Burbage. “’Tis a thousand pities.
For between ourselves, my William, if _Rosalind_ fails us, there
is mighty little substance in our new comedy to set before such an
appetite as Gloriana’s.”

“That’s true enough,” said the playwright, gloomily. “And a writer is a
fool who leans too heavily on a single character. Yet I love that sweet
saucy quean, but God help us all if Tarbert plays her.”

“Would it offend Gloriana if you put on one of your older pieces?”

“Yes, accursedly--you know that, Dick, well enough. It is her whim to
have something entirely new as a midsummer masque, and if she is fobbed
off with an old thing, we shall none of us ever be forgiven.”

“‘Measure for Measure’ she has not seen.”

The playwright shook his head.

“It moves too slow for Gloriana,” he said. “It is too much the work
of the apprentice. And she’d smell out its weakness before we were
half through the first act, for that crabbed old woman--whom God
protect!--has got the keenest nose in the realm in matters dramatical.
The old harridan is wonderful in some ways.” The tone of the playwright
was more reverent than the words it expressed.

“Well, it is a plaguy ill business, William Shakespeare,” said the
tragedian, again having serious recourse to his tankard. “A plaguy ill
business altogether, what with this affair of last night, which is very
like to land us all in the Jug, and young Parflete’s hurt, and now this
offence to Gloriana. However, it is a poor heart that repines. ’Tis all
in the great comedy, my William, ’tis all in the great comedy. Sit ye
down, man, and cut yourself a piece of this most excellent pasty, and
I’ll call the drawer, who shall comfort you with an honest quart of
this right excellent ale.”

Mr. William Shakespeare, however, had little use just now for this
robust philosophy. Mutton pasties and tankards of ale did not appeal to
him this morning. Far more serious matters were afoot.

At this moment, Anne Feversham chanced to enter the inn parlor. And it
was almost as if that sweetly forlorn figure had been conjured up by
the instancy of the poet’s thoughts. She was still in her boy’s dress.
Here was the natural grace, the delicacy of limb and feature, the
perfect harmony of mind and mansion of the true _Rosalind_.

Indeed, that shy and slender grace was the ideal of the poet’s fancy.
He knew now that it was the sight of her in hawking dress in the
tailor’s shop that had set his mind upon the Forest of Arden. And now
her presence in that room kindled once again the eager mind. An idea
sprang into it; an idea audacious, impulsive, extravagant, yet not
wholly outside the region of the possible.

If only this creature, all charm and grace, could be taught to play the
part at so short a notice!

There was no need for the poet to put into words that which had flashed
through his brain. Nay, hardly did he need to look at Richard Burbage
for his friend to read that which was published already in a face so
expressive that it declared his lightest thought.

“Yes, why not?” said the playwright suddenly, without context.

Burbage shook his head. He had a clear perception of the idea that had
kindled the mind of his friend, but it was hardly to be taken seriously.

“Why not, I ask you?” said the playwright. “I am sure there is a ready
wit in that face, and if she has a quick apprehension, there is no
reason why she should not learn the part in a week. Besides,”--the poet
began to pace the room in the stress of the excitement the idea was
generating in his brain--“it would be a means of bringing her to the
Queen’s notice.”

Richard Burbage, however, lent no countenance to this fantastic idea.
He knew Anne’s tragic story. But he had a sufficient awe of the Queen’s
displeasure to have a grave regard for the peril of such a course.

“No, no,” he said, “I pray you dismiss so wild a thought. No one knows
better than you the temper of the Queen. And if she took this matter
amiss, it would bode as ill for us at it would for Mistress Feversham.”

But already the idea had sunk deep. The playwright was alive also to
its possibilities from another point of view. It might prove a means of
gaining the Queen’s sympathies for Gervase Heriot.

“Dick,” he said, “do not forget that now we hold a proof of Mr.
Heriot’s innocence. And should we adduce it in the right season, as
I have good hope of doing, there is every reason to suppose that
Gloriana, who at heart is a just woman, will view the matter tenderly.”

“I beg leave to differ from you there, William Shakespeare,” said
Burbage. “As far as I can see, there is precious little reason to
believe anything of the kind. No one has yet fathomed the Queen’s
caprices. And it ill behooves us of all men, who exist by favor of the
public, to be mixed up in treasonable matters. Besides, after what
happened last night I for one have no longer a stomach for them.”

The poet, however, was not to be deterred by these counsels of
prudence. His sympathies were too deeply engaged. He had taken this
ill-starred pair to his heart. Assured that Gervase Heriot was the
victim of a callous conspiracy, he was fully determined not to rest now
until his wrong had been redressed.

Like Burbage, however, he was fully alive to the peril of mixing
in matters that could so readily be construed as treason. And none
realized more clearly than he the danger that lurked in any affront
to the Queen. Poet as he was, and a dreamer of dreams, he owed his
position among his fellows primarily to the fact that he was a
remarkably able man of affairs. His was the vision that could see, the
wit that could mold, the tenacious power of will that could compass the
design.

Thus in spite of his friend’s caution, the playwright went presently in
search of Anne. Ultimately, he found her in the inn garden sitting by
the side of Gervase Heriot, within the shade of its single yew tree.
Taken by surprise, she had barely time to disengage her arms from about
the young man’s neck, let alone to check the tears that were flowing
down her cheeks.

Gervase, it seemed, was bent on going to London that day. Now that he
had learned Sir John Feversham’s peril, he felt it impossible to stay
longer in hiding. To do so would surely cause the Constable’s life to
be forfeit.

The player did his best to reassure the young man. Sir John’s peril was
undoubtedly great, but hardly so immediate as all that. As he had not
yet been brought to his trial, there was hardly reason to suppose that
he would have lost his head six days hence, when the player would have
the ear of the Queen.

At the same time, Shakespeare agreed that after the unlucky business
of the previous night, Oxford was no place for any one of them. The
sooner they quitted it the better, since at any moment a hue and cry
was likely to be upon them. A play had to be given at two o’clock that
afternoon by the Lord Chamberlain’s servants. But Shakespeare had
already come to the conclusion that as soon as it was at an end, the
Company would do well to lose no time in setting out for London.

The player now proposed that Gervase should keep his present disguise
and return that evening with the others. Particularly anxious not to
lose sight of the young man, and hoping also to prevent his doing
anything unwise, Shakespeare entreated him to stay with the Company and
accept the hospitality of his lodging on the Bankside until such time
as his case could be brought to the Queen’s notice.

Much persuasion was necessary before Gervase could be brought to accede
to this course. But when Shakespeare gave a solemn promise that he
would return to London that evening, and that he would take care to
keep well informed of all that related to the position of Sir John
Feversham, the young man gave a reluctant consent. He would lie in
hiding in the player’s lodging in Southwark, until a favorable moment
came to present his case to the Queen.

Shakespeare was glad to have obtained this promise from Gervase Heriot.
And he then unfolded the design that was in his mind. Having referred
to Parflete’s accident and its disastrous effect upon the new comedy
which depended so much on the part that young actor had to play, the
author made so bold as to suggest to Anne that she should undertake
the chief female character in her boy’s dress. Nature, he said, had
equipped her perfectly for the part of _Rosalind_, if only she could
learn to play it at so short a notice. Moreover, it would be a golden
opportunity to bring her to the favorable consideration of the Queen.
Would Mistress Feversham venture upon a task so delicate and so
difficult?

“Yes,” said Anne, “I will, indeed, if you think my doing so may help to
save the life of Gervase.”

She spoke with a candor, a simplicity, a decision which told the
playwright that here was a firm will and a high courage. And such
evidence removed at least half of the risk he was about to run. One
who could take such a resolve with such a clear determination was not
likely to fail in the critical hour.

“Mistress,” said Shakespeare, “you shall receive instruction at once.
And if you can make yourself reasonably perfect in the part by next
Thursday, you shall play before the Queen.”

Gervase, however, was strongly averse from the scheme. Still, the
event of the previous night had furnished signal proof of the player’s
wisdom. Such a design might appear far sought, yet surely not more so
than the one which a few hours ago had been brought to such a terrible
issue.

Gervase, therefore, was bound to heed the proposal. And, after all,
the most grievous of his many misgivings were those concerning the
fate of Anne herself. In the event of his own sentence being carried
out, she was determined to die, too. Even if now he went to London to
give himself up, her whole mind was set on accompanying him. All that
dissuasion could do had failed to move her from that clear design.
Wherever he went she would go with him, even into eternity itself.

In the end, it was perhaps the resolved attitude of Anne that enabled
Shakespeare to get his way. And, after all, if she had the courage to
embrace a plan so desperate, it was hardly for Gervase to dissent.

And she, it seemed, with a strange faith discerned some slender hope in
it. Such a faith could only spring out of the depths of her despair.
But with the dauntless courage that had carried her through everything,
she began at once to bring the whole force of her will to bear on the
matter in hand.

Little as she knew of the man who had made this singular proposal,
she could not remain insensible to his personality. It appealed to
her in a subtle way. This man, with his gentle voice and face of sad
expressiveness, had masked depths of power that few men and fewer women
were able to resist.

Thus it was that the luckless fugitives came to yield themselves to
the player’s care. Their pass was desperate, indeed. Whatever happened
now could not make it worse. God knew, the expedient offered was
forlorn enough, but for the sake of the slender hope it bore, they
would submit themselves entirely to this man’s hands.




CHAPTER XXIX


AS if to lend color to Shakespeare’s fears, he was soon to hear
disquieting news. Finding himself in the course of the morning in the
tavern parlor, he overheard the conversation of those assembled there.
A sturdy yeoman, it seemed, was full of information concerning a murder
that had been committed during the night at the Grange, the house of
Mr. Simon Heriot, along the Banbury Road.

“They do say that Mr. Heriot himself has had his throat cut by his own
nephew,” said the bearer of the news.

“What’s that you say?” sharply interposed a man who sat in the corner
drinking his morning flagon.

The man was Grisewood. Instantly, he was all attention and alertness.

The countryman repeated his story, to be sure with a number of
embellishments that were very wide of the truth. But the essential fact
was there, that Simon Heriot had been done to death by his nephew in
the course of the previous night.

Grisewood’s interest was very great. He knew as a fact that Gervase
Heriot was close at hand, and that he had a powerful motive for taking
even a course so desperate as the murdering of his uncle.

“Has the nephew been arrested?” asked Grisewood, with an excitement he
did not attempt to conceal.

“No, he’s not taken yet,” said the news-bearer. “But he will be
precious soon, else call me a rogue. They do say that young villain
lies here in Oxford, but I’ll wager Justice Pretyman and his posse will
mighty soon rout him out o’ this home o’ learnin’.”

“Who the devil is Justice Pretyman?”

“The Justice is a great man hereabouts. There’s none better than he at
tracking down the evil doer. I passed him and his men along the road as
I came up. They are going to search every tavern and alehouse in this
city from cellar to attic for this wicked young man, Gervase Heriot.”

“Well, here’s luck to their errand,” said Grisewood, piously, draining
his tankard.

In the next moment, plunged in deep thought, he left the tavern parlor.
Shakespeare soon left the parlor also.

This news was very disquieting to the player. He was in such a state
of grave uneasiness, that he could have wished to start from Oxford
immediately. But it would not be possible to do this until the Lord
Chamberlain’s men had given their final performance that afternoon.
Therefore he must possess his soul in patience until that time, but
also he must be fully alive to all contingencies. Of one circumstance
he was ignorant, and well it was for his peace of mind that this was
the case. He did not know that Grisewood had penetrated the disguise of
the Italian music master.

Happily, there was no reason to suppose that the dead man’s steward
had associated the members of the Lord Chamberlain’s Company with the
tragedy of the previous night. At least, as yet there was no evidence
of this fact. But the playwright felt they must be prepared for all
untoward things that might befall.

Fortune was kind, inasmuch that the officers of the law did not pay
their visit to the Crown Tavern before the final performance had taken
place. Indeed, as luck would have it, they went away at first on a
false scent as far as the neighboring town of Banbury, so that by the
time they found their way to the Cornmarket the play was over, the
audience had dispersed, and the members of the Company were about to
sit down to a well-earned meal.

As was sometimes their habit in such circumstances, they had not
troubled to change their clothes. The principal players were thus
arrayed with the magnificence of gallants and courtiers. And a little
group of these sat sunning themselves outside the tavern door, waiting
patiently for the summons to the board within, when Justice Pretyman
and his posse made their long-expected appearance.

It was well that Shakespeare had already informed Burbage and Kemp,
and one or two of the others, that this untoward visit was to be
expected. Thus, as soon as the officers of the law came into view, the
quick-witted playwright was ready to meet the situation.

A shrewd observer of men and things does not take long to find out what
a man is worth. And a glance at Justice Pretyman was enough to assure
the dramatist that he might have stood for the prototype of Justice
Shallow.

The magistrate arrived with a number of sheriff’s men. And he was
armed with an authority to enter and search every likely place in the
city and county of Oxford which might harbor the notorious traitor,
Gervase Heriot, who had not only broken out of prison, but who had also
murdered his uncle the previous night.

John Davenant had been told beforehand of Justice Pretyman’s coming.
Therefore he met him at the inn door. And the demand that a house of
such repute should be searched for so dark a purpose appeared to fill
the heart of the worthy vintner with grief and consternation.

“You may search my tavern, sir,” he said, “but I would have you to
know that, upon my honor as a licensed victualler, this is the most
reputable tavern betwixt here and The Pump in Aldgate.”

“That I don’t doubt, sir,” said Justice Pretyman, with official
asperity.

He was a pompous, overbearing little man, very conscious of the dignity
to which it had pleased Providence to call him.

“As _custos rotulorum_ of this country, as one armed with the Queen’s
authority----”

“Aye, God protect her,” suddenly interposed a man who stood by in
a voice of fervent piety. “But I would beg you, sir, to abate all
instancy of demeanor and likewise all of the same on the part of your
bumpkins, whom I doubt not are excellent fellows in the right place and
season, but who at this moment will best serve the Queen by bearing
themselves with all the modesty they can command.”

The man who had ventured these somewhat haughty remarks was dressed in
a cloak of plum-colored velvet and a feathered hat, of such style and
dimension as is seldom seen out of a court. He had come up with an air
of nonchalant ease, and had interposed his remarks in a manner which
seemed to claim for them the highest possible consideration.

At the opprobrious term “Bumpkin,” it had been on the tip of
Justice Pretyman’s tongue to retort, “Bumpkin yourself, sir.” He
was a hotheaded little man, also he was vain, also he was very
self-important. But he was thwarted in this natural desire by the very
patent fact that whatever else this haughty personage was, he was
evidently not a bumpkin.

Now Justice Pretyman was a small gentleman, who would like to have been
thought a great gentleman. And those who are thus afflicted, however
much they may browbeat their inferiors, however much they may ruffle it
among their equals, are of all men particularly wary when it comes to a
question of their superiors.

By the courtesy of Providence, it chanced that before Justice Pretyman
was able to make the proper, necessary and entirely satisfactory
rejoinder of “Bumpkin yourself, sir!” his small, birdlike eye lit upon
the plum-colored cloak and the hat with the feather, and further, it
caught a glimpse of a wonderful doublet of black satin barred with
yellow. Therefore, was his rejoinder reduced from “Bumpkin yourself,
sir!” to “I beg your pardon, sir,” with as little in the way of
asperity and as much in the way of dignity as he could command.

The personage in the plum-colored cloak smiled with a benign gravity.

“If you are upon the Queen’s business, sir,” he said, “heaven forefend
that I of all men should come between you and your high and honorable
occasions. But, to be plain with you, I am bound to say you and your
ragged robins have come here in a plaguy ill season.”

“Od’s life, sir!”

The hand of Justice Pretyman strayed involuntarily to the hilt of his
sword. But again his eye caught the plum-colored cloak, and he thought
the better of the matter.

“I have written and signed authority,” he said, “to search this house
for one Gervase Heriot, a notorious traitor, and that is a course I am
determined to follow.”

The man in the plum-colored cloak lowered his voice.

“If such is your intention, sir, by all means pursue it,” he said.
“But, before you do so, there is a matter of grave concern with
which you will do well to make yourself acquainted. Perhaps, Master
Davenant”--he turned to the innkeeper--“you will have the goodness to
inform this gentleman of the matter in question?”

Mine host demurred in a manner of obsequious reverence.

“God forbid, sir, that I should expound the matter to the worshipful
justice when you yourself are by,” he said, in a tone of awe.

“As you will,” said the man in the plum-colored cloak. “The fact of
the matter is, sir,” he said, turning to Justice Pretyman, who by this
time was fully primed for some startling announcement, “a certain lady
who is of the highest--I may say of the very highest--consideration has
just arrived at this inn on her way to the north, and is lying here one
night.”

Justice Pretyman nodded with the gravity of a man who fully grasps the
significance of such a piece of news.

“Indeed, sir,” he said. “Is that the case? And may I presume, sir, to
ask the name of this personage?”

The man in the plum-colored cloak laid a finger to his lip.

“Forgive me, Master Prettyfellow,” he said, “but your style and
assemblance assure me that you are not unacquainted with the Court.
Correct me if I err.”

Justice Pretyman did not correct him.

“And that being the case, I have the less compunction in withholding
the name of the high personage who, at this moment, sheds upon
this humble roof-tree the lively radiance of her presence. Master
Prettyfellow, you take me, I trow and trust. You understand me, Master
Prettyfellow?” The man in the plum-colored cloak laid a confidential
hand upon the Justice’s sleeve.

“By God’s life, I take you, sir.” A subtle but delightful sense of
flattery had been engendered in the little peacock’s brain. “That is, I
think I take you. It is--that is--she is--”

The man in the plum-colored cloak checked the threatened indiscretion
of Justice Pretyman with an uplifted and much-bejeweled hand.

“For heaven’s sake, Master Prettyfellow!” He gazed around him
apprehensively. “We are in danger of being overheard.”

For this surmise, the man in the plum-colored cloak had full warrant
without a doubt. Others, attired with a flamboyance and a glitter that
went well with his own, were standing a little apart. And their almost
excessive gravity of manner could not disguise the fact that they had
both ears and eyes for all that was going forward.

There was one, however, who watched this play with a sour smile. He was
a man more sober in dress, but whose attire was yet that of a person of
quality. He stood quite apart from all the rest, and carried his arm in
a sling. The look on his face clearly showed that he, too, had ears and
eyes for all that was taking place. Moreover, he stroked his chin with
an air of grim but deeply pensive satisfaction.

“If you are determined to have search made of this tavern, Master
Prettyfellow,” said the man in the plum-colored cloak, “it is not
for me to gainsay you. But I am sure you will readily understand how
necessary it is that this matter should be pursued with the utmost
decorum.”

“Sir, that I do promise,” said Justice Pretyman.

“That is well,” said the man in the plum-colored cloak, “with the
utmost decorum. And as I understand, you have figured at Court, Master
Prettyfellow”--here the voice was raised to a level that drew the
attention of the group near by--“And, as I understand, you have figured
at Court, Master Prettyfellow”--the words were impressively repeated.

“You may take it, sir, that I have.” The tone of Justice Pretyman was
full of dignity.

“I am very glad indeed to hear that.” The man in the plum-colored
cloak spoke with a sudden accession of feeling. “I cannot tell you how
glad I am to hear that. Now there will not be the least difficulty
about the whole matter. I will send in your name at once to this most
distinguished lady, who must remain without one. My lord----”

George Taylor and William Kemp, arrayed in the robes of the theater,
stepped forward together in answer to this summons. Such zeal, however,
in nowise embarrassed the man in the plum-colored cloak.

“My lord duke”--he turned to William Kemp--“will you have the good
kindness to take in the name of Master Prettyfellow----”

“Pretyman,” corrected the justice, beginning, however, to perspire
freely.

The officious provincial was not a little uncertain as to the ground
upon which he stood. Judging by the demeanor of these gayly-attired
gentlemen and the high tone that went with it, he began to fear that
the Queen herself had arrived at the Crown Tavern. And his vanity
having allowed him to claim a familiarity with the Court when he had
never been there in his life, he had merely to be received in audience
by her to incur the risk of a grave exposure.

“One moment, sir,” he said, desperately. “If this unknown lady is the
high personage I take her to be, I have no desire----”

But William Kemp, in his ducal trappings, was already away on his
errand.

Justice Pretyman felt the situation to be growing desperate. And,
to make matters worse, the man in the cloak was fain to misread his
attitude of mind.

“I have not the least doubt, sir,” he said, “that if this lady--whom
we shall both do well not to name more explicitly--is informed that
you are familiar with the Court, she will gladly give you an audience,
although you must please remember she travels incognito.”

By this time Justice Pretyman was fully convinced that it was the
Queen herself who was lying one night at the Crown Tavern.

“You mistake me, sir,” he said, desperately. “I never said that I was
familiar with the Court.”

“You never said you were familiar with the Court, sir!” The man in the
plum-colored cloak was the picture of polite indignation. “But, ods my
life, sir! this is a very grave matter.”

Justice Pretyman thought so, too. At least, his perspiring red face
belied him if he did not.

“How I wish, sir,” said the man in the plum-colored cloak, “you had had
the grace to make yourself more explicit. This lady is a bad one to
cross, as all the world very well knows.”

“Yes, sir, I am aware of that,” said Justice Pretyman, beginning
already to wish himself well out of the affair.

The richly caparisoned figure of William Kemp emerged with slow
dignity from the tavern interior. He bent to the ear of the man in the
plum-colored cloak. A good deal of confidential whispering followed, of
which Justice Pretyman could only catch the ominous words, “Her Grace.”

But it was the man in the plum-colored cloak who addressed the uneasy
magistrate.

“The fact of the matter is, sir,” he said, “this lady does not
remember your name, but she hopes she may remember your face. She is
not unwilling to grant you an audience of five minutes, but--strictly
between ourselves--if you will take the advice of a friend, you
will think twice before you run any risk of incurring her august
displeasure.”

Justice Pretyman’s mind certainly seemed to recognize the wisdom of
this sage counsel. And the result of a very little deliberation on his
part was that he gathered his men and made off down the street with the
least possible delay, leaving the members of the Lord Chamberlain’s
Company to enjoy the triumph of their audacity.

To be sure, they little knew on how slender a thread it hung. Not ten
yards from them, during the whole time in which this comedy had been
played, a man stood marking sourly every phase of the proceedings. He
could have undone them with a word.

The word, however, was not spoken. Grisewood judged the hour to be not
yet. Still, he had marked very closely all that had passed. And he had
been at pains to make himself fully acquainted with the matter in all
its details. There and then, he could have laid his finger on the man
these blundering rustics sought. But that would not have suited his
purpose at the moment. For he was too astute not to realize the immense
advantage his knowledge gave him, and far too cunning not to be fully
determined to take some high profit out of it.




CHAPTER XXX


NO time was lost now in moving out of Oxford. Within an hour of Justice
Pretyman’s visit, the Lord Chamberlain’s men were on their way to
London. They were accompanied by Gervase and Anne, who were still
disguised as the Italian music master and his son, and also by the
falconer, John Markham. None of them was aware that, less than a mile
behind, rode Sir Robert Grisewood and his two servants.

The players traveled that night as far as Reading, where they lay, and
reached Southwark without misadventure in the course of the following
afternoon, which was Sunday. Shakespeare felt a keen sense of relief
when he had placed the fugitives in the comfort and security of his
lodgings on the Bankside, which he shared with his friend Burbage.

The tragedian, on his own part, it must be confessed, was terrible
uneasy of mind. He knew the situation to be one of great peril and
difficulty. And he viewed with a feeling little short of horror
Shakespeare’s determination to concern himself with a matter of high
treason. He had a deep pity for the fugitives, but he felt how futile
and how perilous it was for men such as themselves to mingle in their
sinister affairs.

Parflete had been left at Oxford, as he was in no condition to travel.
And over the question of a substitute for that unlucky young actor,
the author and the manager came to the verge of a quarrel. Shakespeare
kept to his determination that Anne should play _Rosalind_ in the new
comedy, while Burbage affirmed that it was contrary to all precedent
and was courting disaster.

In spite of this, however, the author began at once to instruct Anne
in the part. And she brought to her study a keenness of grasp and a
quickness of apprehension that delighted her mentor. Her progress
was very rapid under his wise guidance. In two days, she was almost
word perfect. Moreover, she discovered a natural faculty for acting
which she shared in common with her sex. All her gestures were simple,
unforced, appropriate; and her bearing had an ease and grace that
Parflete himself could not have equaled.

The author was delighted. It was in vain that Richard Burbage shook his
head and indulged in all manner of dark prophecy. Here was the perfect
_Rosalind_. Besides, there lay behind this project a higher and deeper
motive than even the pleasuring of the first lady in the land.

Never for an instant was there absent from a noble and humane mind an
intense desire to serve these hapless children of destiny. William
Shakespeare was determined at all hazards to arouse the Queen’s
interest on their behalf, and if possible to excite her pity. Yet
none knew better than this supreme judge of human kind the peril and
the difficulty of such a task. The Queen was a woman of dangerous and
vindictive temper.

But Shakespeare was pledged to do all that lay in his power to save the
lives of these fugitives. Burbage and Kemp and Heming, and others of
his colleagues, might be full of alarm for the consequences likely to
attend his interference, but they were powerless to turn him from his
purpose. The matter had become a point of honor with him now.

In accordance with the promise made to Gervase, Shakespeare kept
himself fully informed in regard to Sir John Feversham. On the morning
following his return to London, the playwright went to Greenwich to the
Queen’s palace, and there sought an interview with a man with whom he
was on terms of intimacy, who held high office in the Royal Household.
From him he learned that the Constable was held a close prisoner in the
Tower, that the Court of Star Chamber had condemned him already to the
block, but that there was good reason to believe the sentence would
not be carried out for another week at least, since Cecil, the Queen’s
all-powerful minister, felt it was not a case for undue haste.

The high official with whom William Shakespeare conferred shook his
head sadly over the whole matter. It was very ugly, he said, and was
strongly inclined to deprecate the player’s interest in it. He gave him
a word of advice. Let him dismiss the subject from his thoughts as soon
as possible. It was one of those dark things in which no man who set a
value upon his life and liberty could afford to concern himself.

The man to whom this excellent advice was given well knew that it was
sound enough. But he was pledged too deeply; besides, he was not a man
to count the cost. He bore the news back to Gervase, who was fretting
out his heart in his hiding-place in the player’s lodging on the
Bankside, and told him he could possess his soul in patience, at least,
until Thursday.

The three intervening days were fraught with much anxiety for
Shakespeare. The fate of the new comedy hung in the balance. The
absence of Parflete from the cast was felt by all, except the
author himself, to be an irreparable blow to its prospects. And the
announcement that the all-important part of _Rosalind_ was to be
intrusted to one who had absolutely no experience of the theater filled
the other players with dismay.

Burbage alone knew the true identity of the Italian music master’s son.
And even in such a crisis as this, he was too loyal to his friend to
make others a party to his knowledge. But the great actor was sorely
uneasy. His misgivings were many, not only as to the fate of the
comedy, but also as to that of the author himself, now that he had
taken this unlucky resolve to concern himself with treason.

A rehearsal of the play was called for Tuesday afternoon. And here a
surprise awaited those who were prophesying disaster. Complete tyro
as the young Signor Arrigo was known to be, his impersonation of
_Rosalind_ showed a most surprising talent. Anne had been strung up to
a high pitch of excitement. She brought all her high courage and her
quick woman’s faculties to bear upon the task and the result was far
beyond all expectation. There was no denying such grace, such beauty,
such natural aptitude. Not once did she falter in her lines. And then
the voice was so clear and musical, that it might have been that of
_Rosalind_ herself.

Indeed, had not the other players known the new _Rosalind_ to be the
Italian music master’s son, they must have been convinced that she was
a woman! They were bound to agree with the author that young Signor
Arrigo was born to play the part. And their spirits rose accordingly.
Even the staunchest adherents of Parflete were compelled to admit that
fortune had provided them with a substitute of quite remarkable powers.
That gifted young player himself could not have surpassed the new
_Rosalind_.

It was only promise, to be sure. Let them withhold the verdict until
Thursday. These were men of experience, who knew that the happy augury
of the rehearsal was not always borne out by the performance itself.
But they were put in excellent heart by the brilliant aptitude of the
young Signor Arrigo, which so far transcended their expectations.
John Heming, one of the Company’s managers, a man of parts with a
well-developed faculty of criticism, was particularly delighted. He had
never seen such a precocious genius for the stage. And he could not
help admiring the perspicacity which had enabled the author to take a
step so bold, which had led to a discovery of such importance.

All now promised well for the momentous day. If the new _Rosalind_
fulfilled the promise of the first rehearsal, there need be no fears
for the success of the piece. The author had yet to know failure. It
was true the subject-matter of the new comedy might be flimsy enough,
but Burbage and Heming declared, and these were men of ripe judgment,
that it had all the qualities which had made the playwright famous.

Still, before that fateful Thursday dawned, there happened a sinister
thing. Late in the evening of Wednesday, Shakespeare returned alone to
his lodgings. He had been ceaselessly occupied during the day with the
final preparations for the morrow. Everything was now in readiness for
the journey to Richmond, a few hours hence. The playwright was feeling
dog-tired and had a longing for rest, as he turned the key in the door
of his dwelling.

He was surprised to find a light showing through the shutters of the
little parlor in which he wrote and read. The room, it was true, had
been placed at the service of Heriot and Mistress Feversham. But the
hour was so late, that he had supposed they had retired long ago to
their rest.

As a matter of fact, this was the case. But when the playwright entered
the parlor, he found a man sitting there in expectation of his arrival.
It was a warm evening of July, but the face and the form of the visitor
were hidden in the folds of a voluminous cloak.

The unbidden guest, whoever he might be, received Shakespeare coolly
enough. He did not even take the trouble to rise from his chair when
the poet came into the room, but merely held up his hand as if to imply
a need of caution and secrecy, and then in a tone of studied insolence
told him to close the door.

Shakespeare was quick to recognize the voice of his visitor. The man
was Sir Robert Grisewood.

“To what is due this honor?” said the poet with a courtesy that was
deeply ironical.

He knew well enough that his visitor was not likely to be inspired by
any good motive. But long ago he had taken the measure of the man, and
he did not fear him in the least. Indeed, for that matter, he feared no
man, but with that prudence which springs from an intimate knowledge
of the world, he was at once upon his guard.

“You do well to ask that question, my friend,” said Grisewood,
unmuffling his face in order that Shakespeare not only might see it,
but that he might also be disconcerted by the sight of it.

“What is your business with me, Sir Robert Grisewood?” said
Shakespeare, coldly and contemptuously.

“I will tell you.” The eyes of the unwelcome visitor were full of
menace. “I will tell you in a very few words, good Master Actor and
Versifier. Your precious life is not worth five minutes’ purchase.”

The dramatist was wholly unaffected by the announcement.

“That may be so,” he said, coldly. And he gave his shoulders a shrug,
which implied that the information was of very little consequence.

“Shall I tell you why it is not?”

“As you please.”

“Well, to be brief and round with you, good Master Poet, the whole
of your doings, your exits and your entrances, as you would say, of
the past fortnight are perfectly well known to me. And I would fain
inform you that, at this moment, you are harboring under this roof the
notorious traitor, Gervase Heriot, and also the young daughter of Sir
John Feversham, who conspired with him to break prison.”

Grisewood had the air of one who looses a thunderbolt. But if he looked
for the dire effect, which may reasonably be expected to attend such a
Jove-like feat, he must have been sadly disappointed. The man to whom
his words were addressed showed not the least sign of fear.

“All that you say is true enough,” said the playwright, “if it is any
satisfaction to you to know it.”

“Make your mind easy on that score, my friend,” said Grisewood sourly.
“It is a very considerable satisfaction to me to know it.”

“And I presume you would gain a profit from your knowledge?”

“Yes, Master Actor, to be brief and round with you, that is certainly
my intention. And further, I would inform you that the reward I
have in my mind is not one to be despised. Because you will do well
to understand that I have ample evidence to implicate you and your
fellow-players in the murder of my friend, Mr. Simon Heriot, who was
foully done to death in his own house in the course of last Friday
night.”

“In other words, Sir Robert Grisewood,” said Shakespeare, with a biting
coldness that seemed to exasperate his visitor, “you propose to take
profit from the murder of your friend.”

“Have a care, you ranting, play-acting swine!”

Although one hand of the bully was done up in bandages, the other
instinctively sought the hilt of his sword. But this action did nothing
to modify the stern contempt of the actor.

“You are here, Sir Robert Grisewood, to seek a price for your silence?”

The tone seemed to bite like an acid.

“Yes, my friend, that assumption is a true one, and I propose to fix
just as heavy a price as you can afford to pay. And as I understand
your penny peep-show tricks are making you a fortune, the sum I intend
to exact shall not be unworthy of your figure in the world.”

“Name it.”

“What do you say to the sum of a thousand pounds, good Master
Playwright and maker of verses?”

Less of disdain than of pity entered the face of the poet.

“The sum seems little enough,” he said, “for the deed it would
purchase.”

“Aye, little enough, Master Moralist, as you say, but still a fairly
substantial figure for those who have to earn it by the sweat of their
brains. And, of course,” Grisewood added with an ugly sneer, “other
opportunities may arise of adding to the price of my silence, since you
incline to think it too little.”

“I think it neither too little nor too much,” said the playwright.
“For, to be as frank with you, Sir Robert, as you have been with me, I
care so little for your silence, that I would not stoop to buy it if
even a single word were its price.”

“Very well, then, my friend, you shall hang at Tyburn.”

The blackmailer rose from his chair.

“I promise you,” he said, and his eyes were those of a beast of prey,
“my first business to-morrow shall be to seek out my Lord Burleigh.
The whole of the information I possess shall be laid before him, and
you can depend upon it, my friend, you and your infernal company,
upon being lodged in jail as soon as your precious interlude has been
performed before the Queen. It will be a pleasant guerdon to look
forward to, will it not?”

Grisewood realized already that his choice scheme had fallen to the
ground. He saw at once that he had counted on too much. He had looked
for an easy prey. This highly strung, emotional temperament would yield
readily to his threats. It would be easy enough to frighten the very
life out of what was doubtless a craven’s heart.

The knowledge that he was now free to do his worst, and that in
Shakespeare’s opinion the worst he could do was of such little account
as to be a subject of his open scorn, filled him with fury. Also he
was amazed at the utter indifference of the fellow. He had the power,
as he firmly believed, to take away this man’s life, and yet this half
hackney-writer, half merry-andrew was too proud to sue for his life
with civility, let alone to pay for it with current coin of the realm.

Grisewood withdrew with a snarl and a sneer. The morrow should see them
all lodged in “The Jug.” Within a month from that day, he would answer
for it that the noose should be round their necks.

He swaggered out of the house on to the Bankside. Here his two servants
joined him, for at that hour of the night it was unsafe for any man to
be abroad unattended. Thinking his ugly thoughts, he walked slowly in
the direction of the Falcon stairs. There he hailed the waterman, who
was awaiting him with a wherry to bear him to his own lodging in a more
aristocratic quarter of the town.




CHAPTER XXXI


THE morning of the great day broke mistily, with a promise of
summer glory. Poor unhappy Anne, lodged in a cool and clean chamber
overlooking the river, was awake at the first peep of dawn. Her few
hours of sleep had been terribly disturbed. She awoke with a start and
sprang out of bed as soon as the light touched her eyelids. Only too
well did she know that further sleep would not be for her.

Yes, the dread day was come. It might be the last she would know of
liberty. Nay, it was most likely. And it was the day on which the fate
of Gervase would be irrevocably sealed.

She dare not give her mind to the grim matter, which, asleep or awake,
encompassed it. Dressing in a fever of haste, as if she feared to be
overtaken by the thoughts she dare not face, she went out of doors
into the keen morning air. She walked up and down by the banks of the
mist-enveloped river, and in the hope of composing her over-wrought
mind, she began to repeat the lines of her part.

Suddenly she was aware that a figure was emerging dimly from the mists
ahead. It was that of a man. A moment afterwards she had recognized
the author of “As You Like It.”

The playwright came toward her. He too had slept but little. And in
that somber and wonderful face was a haggard weariness that made
the soul of the girl recoil. It was the face of a man besieged and
tormented by a thousand devils; of a man who had never known a moment
of peace in this life, and who hardly looked to know it in the life to
come.

Not so much as a word of greeting passed between them. But as the
player saw the face of young and delicate fairness, seared already by
the anguish of the soul, he placed a hand on the girl’s shoulder with a
gentleness of pity that meant very much more than speech.

“Be of good courage, mistress,” that gesture seemed to say.

Without speaking a word, the player passed on like a wraith into the
mists that hung as a pall upon the river.

Gervase also was early abroad. He too had slept little. Seated at the
window of his room, brooding with a sick heart on the chances of his
fate, he had seen Anne go forth, so that presently he followed her.

For long enough they walked together, and for the last time as they
believed. A few hours hence all would be decided. And in their hearts
their hope of life and perhaps their desire of it was very slender.

Their sufferings of the past few weeks had been bitter. This morning
they were overborne. Whatever fate held in store for them now they felt
they had reached the nadir of the soul.

Soon after nine o’clock that morning the Lord Chamberlain’s servants
embarked in two of the royal barges that had been placed at their
disposal. The progress was slow but comfortable, and by noon of a
glorious July day they had come to the palace at Richmond. All the
players, with one exception, from the most important to the humblest
member of the Company, betrayed evidences of anxiety and nervousness.
William Shakespeare alone was so cool and collected that the occasion
might have been of the most ordinary kind.

Those few among the players who shared the dark secret which was to
make this day so memorable in the life of the author of the new comedy,
were astonished by a calmness that was to them unnatural. And they
could not help marveling how a man whose very life depended on the whim
of a harsh-tempered and capricious woman should be able to mask his
thoughts and to control his feelings in a manner so remarkable.

The terraces of the palace which overlooked the beautiful park in
which it stood were thronging already with a mob of gallants and
court ladies. Their wonderful clothes gave a very second-rate air to
the tawdry finery affected by most of the players. Even the cloak of
Shakespeare himself erred a little, but that was on the side of modesty.

One young fop was quick to turn this fact to account. Having a
reputation for wit, and being surrounded by those in whose eyes he had
an ambition to shine, he gravely accosted the actor. He removed his
plumed hat with a sweeping gesture and made a low bow.

“I beg your pardon, sir,” he said, in a loud voice which attracted
general notice. “Pray excuse the liberty I take in addressing you, but
I admire the style of your cloak so much that I would fain ask the
name of your tailor.”

In spite of the audible tittering of fine ladies and the delighted
guffaws of gallant gentlemen, the playwright showed the perfect
unconcern of one who has his own private standard of men and things.
He did not reply, but quietly looked the impertinent coxcomb up and
down as if he were a new species of animal with whom he was not yet
acquainted.

The fop was nettled by this nonchalance.

“Well, sir?” he said impudently. “Give me your tailor’s name I pray
you, in order that I may have the great felicity of taking the air in a
cloak exactly its fellow.”

The playwright shook his head with an air of polite deprecation.

“I have too kindly a feeling toward an honest craftsman,” he said.

“God’s death, sir! what do you mean?”

“I mean, sir,” said the player, “that I would not like so good a fellow
to run the double risk of a bad debt and an even worse advertisement.”

A roar of laughter followed from those who had gathered at the pleasant
prospect of a little player-baiting by an accredited wag. Many there
were about the Court who were by no means well-disposed toward players
in general. These actors were claiming far too much attention from
those in high places. Their continually growing favor was beginning to
be a matter of concern to those whose own existence depended so largely
on the indulgence of the great.

But the fop was completely taken aback by the player’s rejoinder. For
the moment he did not know how to reply. He had not expected to be
held up to ridicule in that place of all others by an humble individual
who had not the least pretensions to fashion. But the laugh had gone
against him heavily. And being in reality a dull and commonplace fellow
enough, in the end he took refuge in round abuse of “those common jays
who would peacock it among their betters.”

“Pray, my lord, on what ground do you hold yourself to be the superior
of this gentleman?” suddenly interposed a harsh and imperious voice.

It was the voice of the Queen. The group of gallants and fine ladies
had been too much occupied with the sport that was afoot to notice who
it was who had come into their midst.

My lord’s confusion was great. And it was not made less by the look of
sour disdain which animated the features of his sovereign.

This old raddled woman in farcical clothes and an auburn wig was by no
means a fool. She had lived too long in the world and had mingled too
freely with the very best the age had to give not to be an uncommonly
shrewd judge of things and men. She had the rough commonsense which is
a far better equipment than subtlety when it comes to dealings with
human nature.

“Well, my lord, on what grounds I ask you?”

“On the ground of birth, your grace,” said the fop, who by now had time
to collect himself a little.

The Queen’s lip curled contemptuously.

“A man who takes refuge in that,” she said, “can have little merit
of his own, my lord. And to my mind a man is twice a fool who, being
born to opportunity, can turn it to no better advantage. How say you,
Master Shakespeare?”

“There are those who hold, your grace,” said the player in his deep and
musical voice, “that it is better to be a fool of pedigree than to be a
sage without gules or quarterings.”

The Queen laughed. But the ready independence of the player’s answer
pleased her as much as it surprised her courtiers. There was not one
among them who would have ventured it. There was not one among them
who was not unduly eager to acquiesce in any opinion that might be
expressed by this august lady.

It was not the Queen’s habit to unbend easily. She held the exaggerated
Tudor view of the status of the sovereign. Her court was expected
to approach her on bended knee and there were many supple backs in
consequence. But there was not a trace of the sycophant about this
man who conversed with her as modestly, as readily and as easily as
he would have done with a lounger in a tavern. And while the gallants
and fine ladies were not a little shocked by the unaffectedness of
the man’s bearing and marveled not a little that one so august should
bestow so much notice upon a common play-actor, the Queen, on the other
hand, seemed almost to forget for the moment the dizzy eminence to
which it had pleased Providence to call her.

The truth was she dearly loved what she called “a man.” And this was a
scarce commodity in the exotic atmosphere which surrounded Elizabeth
Tudor. Few there were who dared to hold opinions of their own, let
alone to advance them with the unstudied assurance of this man of lowly
calling, who was yet not wholly unmindful of the fact that he was
absolute monarch of an empire more imperial than Gloriana’s own.

To be sure, none of those present realized that fact. Nor was it
realized by the Queen herself. Her mind was strong and shrewd rather
than deep and subtle. It was the player’s independence of judgment and
the clear yet perfectly modest and simple manner by which he gave it
expression which made such an appeal to her.

It was a sad sight for many an astonished and resentful eye to observe
the Queen and the man “Shakescene”--it is a foible of the great to
affect a becoming uncertainty in regard to the names of humbler
mortals--walking quite apart from all the rest, up one alley and down
another, talking and laughing heartily upon terms which perilously
approached equality. What the Queen’s majesty had in common with the
merry-andrew in the barred cloak passed the comprehension of all. But
the harsh and strident laugh of the royal lady, not unworthy of a
raven with a sore throat, could be heard continually. Many a diligent
courtier who had spent the flower of his years in waiting humbly upon
the Queen’s pleasure without having anything very substantial in the
way of preferment to show for it, was cut to the soul.

And it was not here that the scandal ended. A little later when the
Queen dined a place was set for the man Shakescene at her own table.
And many a lisping, lily-white gentleman narrowly observed the demeanor
of this upstart whose homely style and unaffected air offered so wide a
target for their criticism.




CHAPTER XXXII


BY two o’clock that afternoon all was in readiness for the performance
of the new comedy before Gloriana and her Court. A pavilion had been
raised in the middle of one of the great lawns, in order that the
spectators might be shielded from the sunshine which beat fiercely from
a cloudless July heaven. At the edge of the lawn was a thicket of fine
trees and heather, a veritable Forest of Arden in miniature. From the
depths of this glade emerged the performers in this woodland pastoral.

It was a great ordeal for Anne. On an occasion of far less importance
she might have been overcome by fear. But now she was strung up almost
to the breaking point. So grave was her pass and so much was at stake
that a supreme call was made upon her will. And she responded nobly. No
human being could have exercised a greater power of mind or brought a
finer resolution to bear upon her task.

The success of the play was never in doubt. To begin with it was one of
the Queen’s “good days.” At this time Elizabeth was past sixty. And a
temper which was not particularly mild even in the heydey of its youth
had grown severe. But even this old and sour woman could not remain
insensible to the wit and poetry of this new “interlude,” performed
with the highest skill and grace in charmingly appropriate surroundings.

The Queen made no pretensions to literary taste as did King James, her
successor. But she knew what she liked. And her untutored but extremely
shrewd faculty seldom led her astray. There were those, and Heming
and Burbage had been among them, who had been inclined to deplore the
fact that the author had not prepared stronger food for Gloriana’s
palate. A play of delicacy and fantasy, all lightness and grace, would
surely miss the mark. She who had held her sides at the broad humors of
_Juliet’s_ nurse and of _Hostess Quickly_ would hardly appreciate the
melancholy _Jacques_, _Touchstone_ and above all, the subtle charm of
_Rosalind_.

But this was not the case. Those finely accomplished actors, William
Kemp and Richard Burbage, had very wisely been intrusted with the
two chief male characters. To be sure, it was hardly Nature’s design
that they should interpret them, but players of their genius dignify
and embellish every rôle for which they are cast. The noble voice,
the manly bearing, the persuasive ease of style, that choicest fruit
of many a victory hardly won, tells just as surely in a whimsical
impersonation a little away from the main lines of human development,
as in the delineation of some incomparably drawn world figure such as
_Hamlet_, _Falstaff_, _Lear_.

Unaided, these great men would have carried through a weaker play. And
yet they did but serve as a kind of heavy relief, a somber frame for
the central figure. _Rosalind_ has stood for three centuries as the
symbol of womanhood in its youthful glory. That embodiment of the
divinity of girlhood still remains without a peer. And none could have
given it more powerful, more appealing expression than Anne Feversham.

From the moment the slight figure came out of the depths of the
forest and spoke her first magic lines in a voice as clear as a bell,
a hush seemed to fall upon all. The occupants of the pavilion, no
less than the humbler spectators who were privileged to sit upon
the grass were spellbound. The tall figure, trim and slender, yet
exquisite in outline, looked a little gaunt, a little fine-drawn in its
close-fitting boy’s dress. The eyes shone out of the pale face with a
luster that fascinated those the least sensitive to beauty. And the
voice thrilling with a nameless music ravished ears which knew it not
for a cadence borne upon the long night of the soul.

In that great and gallant company, however, were those who had eyes to
see and ears to hear. And when all was said, the Queen was foremost
among them. Harsh, crabbed, difficult, narrow, insensible to many
things as she was to the very end of that long life that was now so
near its close, she retained her force of judgment and her power of
seeing things in their true relation. _Rosalind_ spoke to her; spoke to
her not in her capacity as the sovereign of a great people, but of that
even more sacred, more universal thing, which every woman verging upon
seventy has once been herself. Of a sudden the raddled old cheeks were
wet.

Men, too, were spellbound. Cecil, Raleigh, Pembroke, Southampton and
many others almost equally famous were gazing upon that scene. These
were first-rate minds, and in all ages, in all countries, the eternal
verities address them in the same way. Sir Fopling knew that the Queen
was weeping, and was amazed that she should not have more regard for
the havoc of her cheeks; Cecil knew why she was weeping and held her so
much more a Queen.

Anne was strung to the breaking point. And not the Queen, and not
the Lord Treasurer, with all their power of mind, knew that. Richard
Burbage and William Kemp for all that they evoked the magic phrases
from her lips, for all that they were thrilled by the touch of her
fingers and the luster of her eyes were also unaware of it. One man
alone knew the perilous truth. And he was the individual in the doublet
slashed with bars of yellow who stood leaning against one of the noble
oaks of the Forest of Arden, in full view of the play but out of the
sight of the audience.

Shakespeare never once allowed his eyes to stray from _Rosalind_. He
watched her every movement, her every gesture. He had an intensity of
solicitude that a father might have shown for a beloved but fragile
daughter. At the end of each scene he led her apart from the others and
made her sit in the inner shade of the thicket. Here while she rested
the playwright encouraged her with word and deed. He was all kindness,
all tenderness, all forethought and concern.

Not far away was Gervase. Still in his disguise he had been placed
among the musicians. At Shakespeare’s behest he was biding his hour.
Before that day was out he had made up his mind to reveal himself
to the Queen. But the hour was not yet. It had been agreed between
Shakespeare and himself that the time and the manner of the confession
should be left to the player. And among the audience was the man
Grisewood narrowly watching all that passed. He too felt that the hour
was near in which the truth should be declared. But in his case he was
determined that the dramatic revelation should turn to his own personal
advantage.

In the meantime all went well with the play. Moreover, as it proceeded
the Queen began to show the liveliest interest in the personality of
the new _Rosalind_.

“Tell me, my lord,” she said, turning to Pembroke, an acknowledged
authority in all matters relating to the theater, “who is that sweet
chit in the doublet and trunk hose who cannot counterfeit manhood for
all her strivings?”

“By the bill of the play, your grace, she is called _Rosalind_ and is
apparently of the sex of which she is so poor an imitation.”

“Pshaw, my lord!” said the Queen contemptuously, “do you think I have
neither ears nor eyes? This is a _Rosalind_ that will never be able to
grow a beard. She is of my own sex and a sweeter chit I never saw in
all my life.”

“Far be it from me to gainsay your grace,” said Pembroke with an
elaborate air, “but according to the bill of the play I have in my
hand this _Rosalind_ is impersonated by a young Italian gentleman, one
Signor Arrigo Bandinello by name.”

“A young Italian fiddlestick!” said the Queen. “I tell you that girl is
as much an Italian gentleman as I am. She shall attend us when the play
is at an end. We will go into this matter more fully.”

However, when the play was over, it was the author who was first
honored with a summons to the royal pavilion. The Queen received
him with high good humor. For the time being she had forgotten the
personality of _Rosalind_ in the charm and glamour of the play itself.
In the graciousness of her mood she paid many compliments to the author
of “As You Like It” and was fain to admit “that she liked it very well.”

“You are a wonderful man, Master Shakespeare,” said the Queen. “And I
think you must be the happiest man alive.”

But there was nothing in the face of the player to suggest that
destiny. The somber eyes framed a question which the august lady was
quick to read and in the expansiveness of her mood was even prepared to
answer.

“You inhabit an enchanted world, Master Shakespeare. All the persons
in it are of your creation. You can order their natures and their
destinies exactly as it pleases you.”

“Alas, your grace!” The poet shook his head.

“Tell me, is it not so?” said the Queen.

“The world I inhabit, your grace, is that of human experience. It is
neither less nor more than that which we all know. A maker of plays
must depict life in its verity, and that is a hard matter and one which
tears the soul.”

The playwright spoke with the slow precision of one whom has felt in
his inmost fibers the long drawn agony of mortal life. The Queen was a
little amazed. In such a bearing and in such a speech there was not a
trace of that enchanted mind, all airy lightness, all delicate fantasy,
which had wrought such ravishment. Nor was there any sign of personal
satisfaction in the triumph which had been gained or in the fruits
of success which now he was beginning to gather in ample measure.
The Queen, being a woman, was a little inclined to be piqued by the
aloofness of the dramatist.

“Would you have us believe, Master Shakespeare,” she said, “that the
glad world which your inimitable fancy creates for the pleasuring of
your fellow-men is not a source of joy and delight to its possessor?
And would you have us believe that the homage which all the world has
come to pay to you brings not pride nor happiness?”

The playwright who stood before his sovereign with a throng of great
persons gathered round him, answered these rather embarrassing
questions with a curiously unstudied humility. Such a modesty of
bearing made an effect of perfect sincerity. Moreover, there was a
complete absence of self-regard. Few ordeals could have been more
trying for a man of small education, who knew but little of courts,
than to be exposed to the gaze of many sharp and jealous eyes, and
to be compelled to answer on the spur of the occasion a series of
most intimate questions concerning himself and his art. Such an
ordeal would have been a tax upon the alert readiness of mind and the
self-possession of a highly trained courtier. But there was not a trace
of awkwardness in the bearing of this singular man in the black doublet
barred with yellow. Indeed, there was nothing to suggest that the
situation in which he found himself was in any way unusual. And there
was no evidence that the presence of others, of even the highest in the
land, was a source of embarrassment to him. No man could have been more
completely at his ease or more completely master of himself.

“I will answer the second of your questions first, your grace,” he
said, speaking very slowly and looking directly at the Queen. “I am
indeed a very proud man that the travail of my mind should have given
pleasure to those whose favorable opinion must ever be coveted by all
honorable men. I unfeignedly rejoice and I am filled with gratitude
that your grace and those about you are pleased to approve my labors.
And whatever of happiness comes to me comes to me in that.”

“That is well spoken, Master Shakespeare,” said the Queen. “You do well
to allow that. And now touching the first of these questions I would
put to you. Is it that you take no happiness from the possession and
the exercise of your most noble gifts?”

“None, your grace. They are but the mirror and the counterfeit of life.
We makers of plays live in a world of shadows--a world of shadows woven
out of our own vitals as a spider weaves his web, and from which by
night or day there is no escape.”

“Would you escape them, Master Shakespeare, these inimitable children
of your fancy?”

“Yes, your grace, I would on occasion; I would almost yield life itself
to do so.”

The Queen was astonished by the almost passionate nature of the answer.
This man was no shallow deviser of masques to speed a summer’s day, but
one to whom existence was an almost intolerable burden, which admitted
of very little alleviation. And he was one who read its riddles with
the eyes of a seer.

“I begin to take your meaning, Master Shakespeare,” said the Queen.
“I had supposed that when these children of your fancy laughed and
made merry, you also rejoiced. But I had forgotten that even in these
plays of yours the sadness outweighs the mirth as is the case with life
itself, whereby a double burden is laid upon the endurance of their
creator.”

“Yes, your grace, that is indeed true. And yet that is not the full
measure of a poet’s unhappiness.”

“In what does a poet’s unhappiness consist, Master Shakespeare?”

“It consists, your grace, in this. A poet sees too much, feels too
much, knows too much. He is stretched perpetually on the rack of his
excess. He reads more into life than life itself will hold. Of a most
private grief he will make a little song. He will amuse the groundlings
with the tale of some deep injury he has suffered in his bones. When he
moves the crowd to tears, his fees are paid in blood.”

There was something in the nature of the answer which held the Queen.
Good sense was her highest quality, and it was that quality in others
which never failed to speak to her. She was captivated by the bearing
of this man, in whom she recognized not only the master of his craft,
but also what pleased her even more, a mature mind which had much to
say to her own acute and worldly wise one.

Indeed, so gratified was the Queen with the demeanor and the mental
quality of Mr. William Shakespeare, that, as a signal mark of her
favor, he was commanded to sit in her presence. The sovereign was prone
to carry her Tudor sense of importance to ridiculous lengths, but there
was some subtle instinct lurking within her which sought equality
between “the fair vestal throned by the west” and the monarch of an
empire infinitely wider than her own.




CHAPTER XXXIII


IT was such a spectacle as could rarely have been seen in that place,
this homely fellow without airs or graces or pretensions to fashion,
seated in the presence of his sovereign and treated by her with a
respect she extended to few. But not by word, deed or gesture did
he claim the estate of an equal. He was William Shakespeare, the
play-actor, and she was Elizabeth Tudor, the conqueror of Spain.

But the kingdom of the mind is no Venetian oligarchy. Those who speak
the same language are all made free of it. And queen and mime, alone
perhaps among that assembly, were able to address each other in the
universal tongue. Seldom, of late years at least, had this crabbed,
difficult and arrogant woman, been seen in a mood so accessible. She
spoke freely to this man of things of which few had heard her speak.
And presently she said:

“I hope, Master Shakespeare, you will devise a new play for our
diversion.”

“Already, your grace,” said the dramatist, “there is a new play taking
shape in my head. And if on a day it should have the great good fortune
to please the fancy of your grace, the least of your servants will be
the happiest man in your realm.”

The words themselves may not have been without irony, but the gentle
voice showed no trace of that quality which the countrymen of
Shakespeare so much distrust.

“That is indeed high news, Master Shakespeare. And of your bounty do
we pray you that your new diversion be all in the mood of comedy as is
this inimitable piece we have seen this afternoon.”

“Alas, your grace!” The playwright shook his head. “We poor makers of
plays are no more than mortal men. And as mortal men are subject to the
coils of fate, so are the characters we weave subject to those laws
which govern our being.”

“I don’t understand,” said the Queen.

“We makers of plays, your grace, often have but a small part in our
own contrivances. Many a time have I devised a play in the spirit of
comedy, but it is ever the characters themselves who spin the plot.
And whether they shall spin it to a comic or a tragic issue none but
themselves shall say.”

“But you are the moulder and the master of your characters, are you
not, Master Shakespeare?”

“Alas, your grace, my characters are the moulders and the masters of
me!”

The Queen was perplexed by so paradoxical a saying.

“I confess,” said she, “I should ever have thought it to be otherwise.
Now is it that you would have us believe that although you have
yourself devised the characters and the plot of your new interlude,
you have so little hold upon them that you know not until your play is
written whether it will be in the tragic or the comic vein?”

“It may not always be so, your grace, to the extent that it is in this
particular case. But in this instance, I will confess that I have but
little hold upon the destiny of the characters in the story.”

“That seems very odd, Master Shakespeare. And our counsel to you is
to take a very speedy and secure hold upon your characters unless you
would court our grave displeasure.”

“Alas, your grace!” The playwright sighed heavily.

“Tell me, sirrah, what is your perplexity?”

“To tell my perplexity, your grace, would involve the whole plot of the
story, and a recital of that your grace would doubtless find tedious.”

The Queen, however, in the expansiveness of her mood, assured the
author that he need have no fears upon that account. On the contrary,
she professed herself delighted at the prospect of hearing it. She
avowed, besides, that her ladies would be immensely diverted by
hearing the argument of the new play fresh from the mint of the poet’s
invention.

“Do you tell us the story, I beseech you, Master Shakespeare!” said the
Queen. “And although I cannot pretend that an unlearned woman such as
myself has it in her power to resolve your perplexity, there are about
us those of quick parts who shall hear it, who, I doubt not, will be
able to give you valuable advice upon the conduct of your play.”

Doubtless the Queen spoke in mockery, since at heart she was a despiser
of most men and of all women. Mr. William Shakespeare, however, was
fully prepared to take her at her word.

The poet, in order to give full effect to his narrative, rose from the
chair upon which he was seated. With perfect self-possession and an air
of supreme mastery which it is given to few men to attain, he stood
to confront the Queen and the expectant and critical throng of her
courtiers.

The lives of Gervase Heriot and of Anne Feversham were at stake. And
instinctively the poet knew that his own life was at stake also. No
hazard could have been more perilous than that upon which he now
proposed to embark. He was about to take a very grave liberty with an
august personage who was notoriously quick to resent even a minor one.

The mind of such a man, however, moves on a plane where the mere
personal equation is of very little account. Had the least thought of
self entered it, such a hazard had not been for a moment possible. His
own safety and freedom were as nothing. The whole force of his mind was
centered in the hope of preserving the lives of these hapless children
of destiny.

“I will give the plot of the play as briefly as I can, your grace. And
under your grace’s favor and that of the ladies and gentlemen of your
court I will beg you to devise a fitting and proper conclusion for it
and thereby spare the poor author many a sleepless night.”

The playwright spoke in a clear and measured tone. His voice was raised
so that all might hear every word distinctly. The air of the man, which
was far too much infused with the play of a noble mind to bear any
suggestion of effrontery, had already made a profound impression upon
all. Such a voice, such a demeanor made it clear to the Queen, no less
than to the youngest page within earshot, that the recital of this
story involved issues far deeper, far more complex than the mere idle
gratification of an author’s vanity.

“An extraordinary man,” whispered the Lord Treasurer in the ear of his
friend, Pembroke. “I have heard much of his plays of late, but I cannot
pretend to be a judge of ’em. But if they are as remarkable as the
writer, it is no wonder they stand so high in the public esteem.”

Pembroke made no reply. For one thing he was sadly uneasy. He had grave
fears as to the course the story would take, for he had reason to
suppose that Shakespeare had actively concerned himself in the affairs
of Gervase Heriot, and that by hook or by crook he was determined to
bring them to the notice of the Queen. In Pembroke’s view it would
be the height of folly to introduce such a perilous topic in such
circumstances, but poets were a peculiar race, apt to be carried away
by an idea. And the subtle significance of the man’s manner in the
telling of the story led my lord to anticipate the worst.

An expectant silence fell on this assembly. The playwright had begun
his narrative, and except for the inflections of the clear, yet low and
gentle voice, there was not a sound to be heard within the precincts of
the pavilion.

“A certain young man,” the playwright began, “well born, well favored,
well endowed, with every grace of mind and heart, fair of form as a
young god, a very Antinous among his kind, a beautiful youth who has
thought ill of none, much less having performed it against any, has
yet been born to one signal disadvantage. And the disadvantage is so
uncommon in itself that it seems strange that he should suffer it. It
is merely that he is too much the favorite of fortune. And yet I would
have your grace remark, for that is the essence of my story, how this
one faint cloud in the fair heaven of this youth’s tranquility is
enough to contrive his overthrow, to dim all his glories, to rob him of
all hope of peace and happiness in this life.”

The Queen nodded her head sympathetically. She was following every
word with the closest attention. And indeed the pregnant manner of the
story’s telling compelled it.

“The young man’s disadvantage is very great inasmuch that he has the
ill-hap to inspire the covetous envy of a wicked kinsman. It is a
simple stroke of ill-fortune, as your grace will see, which he cannot
help and for which he is not in any wise responsible. This kinsman, his
father’s brother, although himself a man of property and well placed in
the world, is yet consumed with a desire to add to his own demesne his
nephew’s broad lands in the west country. He is a bitter-hearted and
envious man, who has carried on a perpetual war with fortune because
she has not made him the elder brother.

“Chance puts a weapon in the hands of this covetous man. The age is
one of peril and unrest. It is a time in which every man suspects his
neighbor. Nothing is easier for a base man who is also bold than to
bring a charge of misfeasance against one he would remove and whose
lands he would inherit. And this is what the uncle decides to do in
the matter of his nephew. He procures two evil men to accuse the young
man of having borne a part in a wicked and vile conspiracy against the
person of the sovereign. In the age in which the play is cast such
things are unhappily too common, and this is a bad man’s opportunity.

“To be brief, your grace, the plot is laid, the charge is made, the
young man is brought to trial and condemned upon the evidence of two
suborners. He is unable to refute the accusation, so cunning are the
rogues by whom he is beset; moreover the author of the plot has always
passed for a just and disinterested man.

“To add to this unfortunate young man’s mischances, his trial is held
behind closed doors, for, as I say, the times are greatly perilous and
the public mind is much inflamed. And he is condemned privily to the
block, and is sent to a strong fortress in the country, there to die by
the ax on a certain day. He makes an appeal to his sovereign, an august
and gracious lady whom he has faithfully served. But stealthy serpent
tongues have done their work only too well. The Queen will not heed the
appeals of this innocent, unhappy youth, and he is left to his cruel
fate.

“The decree of heaven is otherwise, however. The inscrutable Providence
which has used the young man tenderly in all things save one and in
that one so unkindly, begins to relent toward him, and, as your grace
shall hear, he is not left to die.”

The playwright paused for a moment. The attention of his hearers was
riveted by the force and cogency of a narrative which was given with
a solemnity so impressive that it was made to appear a veritable
page from life itself. The Queen, her ladies and her gentlemen, were
spellbound by the vivid power of the recital. But Cecil and other high
officers of the household, who were able to trace the parallel of the
story were transfixed by the man’s audacity.

Only too clearly did they recognize the source of the plot of the
dreadful drama this man was daring to unfold. And if they could have
done so they would have stopped this hopelessly indiscreet recital
of it. Blank consternation was written in the faces of those who knew
whence the story came.

“Stop the mouth of that madman, for God’s sake!” cried the Lord
Treasurer in the ear of Pembroke.

But not Cecil and not Pembroke and not mortal man in that assembly
could stop the mouth of the player now.

“Your grace,” the low, clear voice went on, “this innocent youth is not
left to die. The governor of the fortress wherein the young man is held
captive, a most honorable and worthy and highly esteemed servant of
the state, has a young daughter. She too, like this ill-starred youth,
is passing fair, and like him is also happy in every relation and
attribute of life save one. And her unhappiness is that she has not yet
known love.

“But on a day, your grace, love comes to her. One summer’s morning
it is the will of fate that she shall see the condemned man in the
courtyard of his prison. And from his own lips she learns his grievous
history. She learns that three days hence he is to die by the ax.

“A rage of pity comes upon her. At all costs she is resolved to save
him from a fate he has done nothing to deserve. And this young girl, so
brave and so high of soul, finds a means to let him out of his dungeon,
and contrives his escape from the castle by a famous secret passage way.

“And there is more to tell. Love has come to her. She yields all that
she has of security and also the many benefits she enjoys under her
father’s roof in order that she may share the life of this hunted
fugitive. Footsore and hungry, by mere and mead, sleeping now under
the open sky, now in barn or byre, they make their way from place
to place. The officers of the law are ever upon their heels, but
Providence is with them, so that at last they come to a fair and famous
city and fall in with a cry of players.

“Now may it please your grace, one of these players is not only an
actor but is also a maker of plays. And this man, by the bounty of
the gracious lady his sovereign, has been commanded to devise for her
a pastoral to be performed in her presence on the greensward of a
summer’s afternoon. And this man is so charmed by the grace and beauty
of these vagabonds, both of whom are dressed as boys, so charmed by
their fair appearance and their goodly manners, that he would fain
admit them into the company of players, in order that they may be
trained as actors, and perchance on a day delight the Queen with their
accomplishment.

“At first these wanderers reject the proposal. But they are hard set.
They have journeyed far and food and lodging are to seek. And being
driven to a final desperate extremity at last, they put their faith in
this play-actor. They reveal to him the whole of their tragic history
and crave his help.”

“One moment, Master Shakespeare.” It was the harsh, imperious voice of
the Queen. And it seemed to fall like a thunderclap upon the expectant
hush engendered by the player’s narrative. “Do I understand you to say
that these persons informed this play-actor of the whole matter?”

“Yes, your grace, of the whole of their history,” the player spoke with
a calm fearlessness: “the whole of it as it was at that time known
to them. Moreover, this player, having heard their tragical story,
resolved to help them to the utmost of his capacity. To this end he had
them put in a disguise of an Italian music master and his son.”

“In order, sirrah, I presume,” said the Queen’s harsh voice, “to defeat
the ends of justice?”

“Not in order to defeat the ends of justice, your grace,” said the
player with a calm deference which, however, did little to allay the
rising anger of the Queen, “but rather to the end that justice might
be vindicated. That only was the purpose in the player’s mind as shall
presently appear. But under your grace’s favor, I will continue this
tragical history.”

“Do so, sirrah, I pray you.” The voice of the Queen was now ominous
indeed.

“The fugitives had lain but one night at the inn in the city in the
disguise of an Italian music master and his son, when an unhappy
distraught man came seeking them. He was the devoted servant of the
governor of the castle. His master, it appeared, upon learning his
daughter’s act, had repaired straightway to his royal mistress with
news of the escape of his prisoner. Moreover, he took upon his own
shoulders the whole of the blame. He withheld from the Queen the part
his daughter had played in his prisoner’s escape and submitted himself
to fate.”

By now there were many who would have stopped the mouth of the player,
and foremost among them was the Lord Treasurer. This man, Shakespeare,
knew too much. And while some marveled at the madness of his audacity,
and all deplored his grievous indiscretion, there was not one among
them who might venture an attempt to silence him without affronting
the temper of the Queen.

But for that matter it had been impossible to silence the player now.
For one thing the Queen, with a face that boded ill, was marking
intently every word that fell from the man’s lips. And again the
player’s feelings were wrought to such a pitch of interest by the
stress of his narrative that he seemed to be carried completely beyond
himself. For the consequences likely to ensue he had no care. He was as
one transfigured. Let justice, mercy and truth prevail even if his own
life was the price to be paid for those brightest jewels in Gloriana’s
crown.

“Is there no means of stopping the mouth of that madman?” growled the
Lord Treasurer in the ear of Pembroke.

But Pembroke could give no answer. He turned aside, his breast
tightening, his shoulders shaking convulsively.

“Pray proceed with your story, Master Shakespeare,” said the harsh
voice of the Queen.

“The servant of the governor of the castle,” continued the player in
obedience to this command, “an honest, good fellow, no sooner learned
his master’s peril, than he pursued the fugitives from place to place
over all the midland country-side. Thus it was that in the end he had
the good fortune to come up with them at the inn at Oxford. Now I would
respectfully crave that your grace remark with particular closeness
that which I am about to relate.”

“You can count upon our so doing, Master Shakespeare,” said the Queen
grimly.

The player smiled rather wanly. He could not remain insensible to the
ominous words and the yet more ominous tone. But there was not a tremor
of fear in the dauntless face.

“It is simply, your grace, that this humble player, the least of the
Queen’s servants, is alone to blame for all of that which follows. In
the first place, the young man was no sooner informed of the peril of
the governor of the castle than he desired to yield himself straightway
to the will of the sovereign. But the player, mistakenly perhaps, was
able to hold him from this most honorable course until a riper season.
And in the meantime, the player set his mind to work in order to adduce
a tangible proof of this young man’s innocence, so that when the time
came for him to cast himself upon the mercy of the Queen, he should not
appear empty-handed before her.

“Providence favored him. By means of a device which I will not
describe, lest I tax the patience of your grace, the player was able to
obtain an irrefragable proof of the young man’s innocence. By the same
means, moreover, he was able to adduce clear evidence of those who were
guilty. But of this I will presently speak more fully.

“In the meantime, however, while all this was going forward, the hour
was drawing near for the new interlude to be given in the presence of
the sovereign. And the player deemed such a season to be not the least
favorable for two noble but ill-starred children of destiny to invoke
justice and mercy of a woman, the first in the realm.”

At this point the player paused in his narrative. A profound silence
descended upon all. Every person who had heard the singular story was
now aware that it was no mere figment of a poet’s mind. It was a grim
and terrible reality. And that unhappy fact was declared in the harsh
and cruel eyes of the Queen.

For a full minute not a word was spoken. The player had given as much
of his story as was vital to his design. And now with a true political
instinct he refrained from adding another word, but left it to the
Queen herself to speak.

She made no haste to do so. Astonished beyond measure, resentful,
angry, she brought the whole of her powerful mind to bear upon the
matter before giving expression to her thoughts. Dumbfounded as she was
by the audacity and the indiscretion of this man, two facts dominated
her now. The mystery attending the circumstances of the young man,
Gervase Heriot’s escape from Nottingham Castle, was now made clear. The
unlucky Sir John Feversham had neither art nor part in it after all.
He had kept a stubborn silence for no other reason than to shield his
daughter. And it was none other than that froward young woman who had
given that charming performance in the new comedy but a few minutes
ago. At last the Queen turned to her ladies with a look of sour triumph.

“Did I not say,” she cried, “that that was indeed no youth who strutted
in doublet and trunk hose?”

A moment afterwards the august lady had turned imperiously to the
player.

“This seems but a tame conclusion to your new interlude, Master
Shakespeare.”

“Most humbly and respectfully do I beg your grace to devise an issue to
this pitiful story.” The player had now sunk upon one knee. “It lies
far beyond the compass of my own poor contrivance. But it is within the
province of your grace to fashion it in either the comic or the tragic
vein. Yet if it shall seem good to you to fashion it in the latter,
there is one last boon that I have to crave for these children of fate,
and on my knees I do so.”

“And what, pray, is the boon you crave, sirrah?” There was not a spark
of pity in the face or in the tone of the Queen.

“The boon I would crave for them is this, your grace. Should it not
seem good to your grace to exercise the most royal prerogative of
mercy, they implore you to allow them to die together on the same
block, by the same ax, in the same hour.”

This grim request sent a shudder through that horrified assembly. But
not a muscle relaxed in the ruthless face of the Queen.

“Master Shakespeare,” she said in a slow, measured voice, “your request
shall be granted. These traitors, young as they are, shall die together
on the same block, by the same ax, and in the same hour. And as there
is a God in Heaven, Master Shakespeare, you yourself shall share the
fate they have so richly merited.”




CHAPTER XXXIV


IT was an important evening at the Mermaid Tavern. Long before supper
time the spacious upper chamber with the sanded floor began to fill.
All the regular frequenters of the place were eager for news of Will’s
new comedy. But it was a long way in those days from the palace at
Richmond to the famous hostelry in Eastcheap. Authentic information was
tardy in coming that evening.

The hour of eight was told on the clocks of the city. Yet there was
never a word of news of Will or of his comedy. This was indeed strange.
Among those who came very often to the tavern for the sake of the
company to be found there was a number of men about the Court. Not one
of these has as yet appeared upon the scene. And neither Will himself
nor any of his fellow-players had arrived.

Dishes of deviled bones and flagons of wine were laid on the long
table. The company sat down to a very informal repast. Tongues were
unloosed and rumor was presently rife.

The assembly that had gathered in this long upper chamber was a curious
one. In the shabby and careless garb of the poet, or in the soiled
doublet of the writer for the theater was contained some of the
choicest spirits of the age. On most evenings this strange company was
garnished with a sprinkling of men of fashion with some pretensions to
wit, but these were absent to-night. This fact, taken in conjunction
with a singular dearth of news was held to be a sinister omen. No news
is not always good news in matters relating to the theater.

There was genuine concern among those present. Will was a universally
popular man. In spite of a very remarkable success which had sprung
from beginnings of the humblest kind he bore himself invariably with
a modesty and a courteous consideration for others that completely
disarmed even those who had the most cause to envy him. Moreover, those
who had the entrée to that sacred upper chamber at the Mermaid well
knew how thoroughly his success was deserved. For these were first-rate
minds. These men, as far as it was possible for the contemporaries
of William Shakespeare to do so, realized and appreciated his
accomplishment.

If Will had at last met with a check to his career none would regret
the fact more than these friendly and admiring rivals who had an
intense admiration for his extraordinary genius. And some of them,
moreover, had already come to live in a kind of reflected glory that it
cast upon them.

Rumors of failure grew with the arrival of each newcomer who yet had no
first-hand news to give.

“Did he let you con the piece, Martin?” asked a gray and worn veteran
with a ragged beard of an individual very familiar to himself who sat
at the head of the long table.

“Aye, he did so. And I tell you it is the best thing he has done yet.
If he makes a failure of that, God help the age, say I.”

“He was not very happy about it two nights ago.”

“Ah, that’s Will’s way. He never does anything but that he wishes it
better.”

“And yet they say he never blots a line, eh?” said a young man with
flaming hair who sat opposite.

“It is only Ben who says that,” rejoined the veteran at the table-head.
“And Ben blots so many himself that he thinks nobody else takes any
pains by comparison.”

“Then you consider this new piece a good thing?”

“Aye, good enough, good enough. It is a better thing than any of
us will ever see our names to.” The speaker sighed. He was a man
of infinite courage and ambition. But he had lived long enough and
had striven hard enough to learn the sharp truth that these things
of themselves will not conquer. “But by God!” The fine poet and
great-hearted man took up his flagon. “I’d be the last in the world to
begrudge Will his good luck. His fortune is our fortune too. He is a
nonesuch and not again will the world look on his like. He is a king
in his own right, and by God, I drink to him. Here’s to our monarch.
May God protect him, and may he never write a worse comedy than ‘As You
Like It.’”

Dekker rose and held his flagon aloft. And all the others at the long
table followed his example.

There was a murmur of voices and a clink of cups.

These men could not bring themselves to admit that by any possibility
the true prince had met defeat at last. Still, the total absence of
news from Richmond was very ominous. But even if the Queen had not
approved the new comedy, that was not warrant sufficient to assume, as
more than one among that company made bold to maintain, that the new
comedy was not worthy of her approval.

“’Tis a fine thing,” said the man at the head of the table, “and you
may lay to that. His genius ripens every day. There is nothing in my
opinion beyond the compass of Will’s invention.”

“He lacks but one thing,” said a large, ugly and pock-marked fellow who
came slowly into the room.

“And what is that, Ben?” was the question that was promptly fired at
the newcomer.

“A little learning, my friends, to temper the heat of his mind. A
little of the classic severity of Athens to mellow the over-sharpness
of his wit, to trim and clip the excess of his redundancy, to confine
the natural incontinence of his humors.”

But the words of Ben were drowned in good-natured laughter. All knew
the foibles of this heavy and slow-moving man. He was a surly dog fond
of his growl. He must ever run contrary to received opinion. He had an
exaggerated regard for the classic tongues. But there was no stouter
fellow, no stauncher friend, and there was not a grain of smallness in
his nature.

“Sit down, you dog,” said the time-worn warrior at the table-head, “and
bury your mask in a flagon. Hi, drawer, a cup of Muscadel for Master
Jonson. Ben, my son, with all your learning, aye, and with all your
genius, too, you will never be quite man enough to don the mantle of
William the Peerless.”

“Did I ever say I would?” said Ben roughly. “Is there any man alive
that ever heard me speak so windily? There is no man living or dead who
is the peer of our incomparable William and I care not who hears me say
it.”

The great rude fellow brought down his bricklayer’s fist with such a
resounding thud upon the table that the dishes rattled and the wine
slopped over in a dozen cups. But this rough diamond, who as yet did
but stand at the threshold of renown, was freely forgiven all the
inconvenience he caused for the sake of that honest enthusiasm whereby
he did himself honor in the eyes of all.

The motley crew who sat night after night at that table were without
exception men of parts and understanding. Whether their ruffles were
ink-stained, whether their hands were lily-white, whether they wore
silk and fine linen or plain bombazine, whether they lived by the sword
or by the pen, or whether they had no need to live by either, there was
no appeal from their judgments upon poetry and the drama, and posterity
has not found occasion to reverse their verdicts. It was the great
age indeed. These were men of rare mental power, of large and liberal
intercourse. They knew the highest when they met it and knew how to pay
it homage.

For example, this rude fellow Ben Jonson, this clumsy, loud-voiced,
opinionative Scotsman, a pock-marked, ugly creature who had lived rough
and who had the brand of a felon on his thumb was the coming man. He
would go far, said the quidnuncs. He was heavy metal of the royal
currency; one who under Providence was destined to be second only to
Will himself.

Thus men cast in a gentler mold made room for him. He was no favorite,
to be sure. His manners were too rude, his opinions too unqualified.
But the sacred fire was in his veins. And those who were wont to
dispute precedence with persons of far more account in the eyes of the
world were proud to sit at the feet of Ben.

The long July evening was closing in. The candles had been brought and
the shutters drawn in the long upper chamber. And that which hitherto
had been hardly more than a thrill of half-expectant surmise was now
become a slow agony of suspense. It was incredible that news had not
come from Richmond. The play must have been over by six o’clock. The
verdict of Gloriana and her court must have been delivered long ago.

Was it possible that the miracle of the age had tasted his first
defeat? Well, and if he had? said the graybeard at the end of the
table. Gloriana and her Court were not infallible. Will should read
his comedy to his peers that night, as he had done on many occasions
previously. Theirs should be the verdict, for they alone, with all
respect to Gloriana, were qualified to give it.

The brave words from the table-head were received with loud approval
from a score of stalwarts who by now had gathered round the board. Such
words were well and wisely spoken. But suddenly there fell a hush. A
famous and admired figure came quietly, almost stealthily, into the
room.

It was that of a bearded, brown-faced man of forty, trim and soldierly
of look, secure and curiously authoritative of bearing. His dress
was rich and fine; his air that of a courtier, urbane, polished,
calm, quizzical. There was the coxcomb in the outward man, but not a
trace of it in the far-looking, eagle-glancing eyes. This was a great
figure, even in that company, which measured a man not by his outward
assemblance but by his deeds.

“Ah, now we shall know,” cried the man at the table-head. “Here is Wat.
Newly from Richmond, else I’ll never drink sack again out of a bombard
until I attain the age of a hundred and twenty.”

“Yes, Martin, newly from Richmond, as you say,” came the courtier’s
lisp. “Newly from Richmond, newly from Richmond.”

The newcomer sank down in a manner of extreme weariness in a vacant
chair. He sighed heavily.

“A cup of the muscadel for Sir Walter,” said the man at the table-head.
“And lively about it, boy. No need to tell us what has happened, Wat.
But we did not think it was so bad as all this. We did not think it
possible that Will could fail. Is it--tell me, Wat--that Gloriana has
smelt some affront in the new piece? Well, well, she is getting old,
and even in her prime she was--well, shall we say?--what shall we
say?--why, body o’ God, what’s the matter with the fellow?”

The speaker had good reason to ask the question. Raleigh--the
brown-faced courtier was no less than he--seemed utterly overcome.
Something untoward had most certainly happened. There was more than a
mere matter of a play’s failure or success in the dismay of that strong
face which shone a bleak gray in the uncertain light of the room.

“Why, what’s the matter? Tell us, for the love of God!”

But Raleigh shook his head haplessly. He who knew not the meaning of
fear in the presence of bodily peril, he whose resolution never failed
in great crises, was wholly unable to tell the news he bore.

“Is it Will?” A sense of foreboding had descended suddenly upon all.
“Tell us, I pray you.”--The eagerly anxious voices sank in the oddest
manner. “Has aught happened to Will Shakespeare?”

Raleigh did not answer. But that face so eloquent of power and high
capacity seemed to grow a little bleaker. And then twenty pairs of eyes
that were turned almost fiercely upon it saw that a rush of sudden
tears was shining there.

The man at the head of the table laid a hand to his heart.

“Oh!”

His exclamation went echoing through the silence of the long room.
Again the solemn hush descended. That which Walter Raleigh had not
courage to tell, not one of these men could muster the courage to ask.

What could have happened? Those were perilous times indeed; times in
which the quietest, most law-abiding citizen took his life in his hand
when he walked down the street. The tragedy of poor Kit Marlowe was in
every mind. Had Will Shakespeare, the incomparable poet and charming
personality, met the assassin’s knife by chance or by design? The face
of Raleigh portended not less than that. Yet not one of these men could
summon enough resolution to set his doubts at rest. The silence was
painful. A pin could have been heard to fall in the room.

Suddenly there came sounds of heavy feet stumbling, blundering
up the wooden stairs. The door was flung open. A thick, squat,
gnarled-looking fellow reeled in like a man under the influence of
wine. His face shone livid in the light of the candles.

It was Burbage the tragedian.

“Speak, man! Tell the news!” came the hoarse demand of a dozen voices.

“Shakespeare,” The voice of the tragedian could hardly be heard. “He
is arrested by the Queen’s order. They say--they say he will lose his
head.”




CHAPTER XXXV


GRIEF, consternation, horror surged through that room. For the moment,
the shock of the announcement was more than they could bear. It was as
if each man present had been stunned by a blow. But the calm was for
the moment only. In the next came a babel of tongues framing a score of
incoherent questions.

Richard Burbage replied to none of these. He stood an instant swaying,
his ashen face framed in the eerie glow of the candles. And then
without a further word he turned and passed like a ghost through the
door of the room with the same abruptness with which he had entered it.
He went headlong, stumbling and creaking, down the ricketty stairs of
the old tavern and out into the July evening.

In the street, hard by the signboard, under the shadow of the tavern
wall, two men lay in wait for the tragedian. One of these was his
fellow-player, William Kemp, the other John Heming the manager of the
Globe Theatre. These also were men of strong feelings, but they had
them under control, whereas Richard Burbage who might almost be said to
worship the ground on which the poet trod, had been carried completely
away by this direst of tragedies, which he knew not how to face.

As became good men, true friends, staunch comrades, Kemp and Heming
were fully determined not to let Burbage pass out of their sight during
the remainder of that night. But they must not show themselves in his.
Already he had resented their presence fiercely, had cursed them when
they had sought to console him, and had so far fallen from that poise
of mind and temper which at ordinary times made him a most agreeable
companion, as to threaten to do them violence, “if they would not have
the goodness to keep themselves to themselves and stand out of his
light.”

Thus William Kemp and John Heming remained well in the shadow of the
tavern wall. But when their distracted friend came out of the inn,
perhaps a little sooner than they had expected him to do so, they
proceeded to follow him at a respectful distance. Without betraying
their own presence, they contrived to keep him well in view.

Certainly there was very good ground for such solicitude. The tragedian
swayed about from side to side like a ship in a gale, now up one
deserted street, now down another. And all these dark purlieus of
the city swarmed with perils at that hour of the night. Moreover,
the ostensible condition of this pedestrian, the vagaries of whose
gait certainly resembled those of a man far gone in liquor, seemed to
cry aloud for the attentions of the vigilant cutpurse or the lurking
footpad.

With unseeing eyes, with unstable limbs, with mind insensible of its
surroundings, with steps not knowing whither they were bent, the
tragedian walked the byways of the city during the whole of that
night. Like the fate-riven figures in those soul-shaking tragedies
in whose delineation he excelled all men, he was at the mercy of an
anguish of mind that was tearing him in pieces.

This was a large and noble nature. And bitterly it was rent because
it had not been more vigilant. Richard Burbage felt himself unworthy
of the sacred duty imposed upon him by his fraternal intimacy
with the poet. He had an insight into human nature which enabled
him to understand a certain weakness that must inevitably attend
such transcendent powers as those of William Shakespeare. And this
understanding seemed to lay the charge upon him of watching over this
man who was not as other men.

To this trust Burbage felt he had not been true. Yet it was not easy
to know by what means he could have saved his friend from his terrible
pass. Times and again he had besought him to be prudent, and his
counsels had been urged with intense conviction. None realized more
clearly than Burbage that it was indeed a perilous hour for any man
to be concerned with treason. The Queen’s temper was implacable. She
who had done to death a kinswoman and a queen because her own personal
safety was held to be remotely threatened was not likely to know the
meaning of pity in the case of an humble play-actor who had mingled so
openly in the cause of a condemned traitor.

Burbage mourned the madness of his friend. Pacing the dark streets of
the city during the watches of the night in a state of mind bordering
upon frenzy, he was a man self-tormented. Yet after all, he was in
no wise to blame. No grace of his, no vigilance, indeed, no human
foresight could have averted this tragic issue.

The two comrades of the tragedian kept the swaying figure ever in view.
Wherever it went that night they followed it. Hour after hour Burbage
wandered purposeless about the city. His grief, silent and contained
though it was, was a thing dreadful to behold.

Towards midnight he came to the river. A new fear then gripped the
hearts of his comrades. Very stealthily they crept up closer behind
him. What more likely than that one in such a frame of mind should
have recourse to those dark waters which have done so much to ease
the misery of the world? Bareheaded, unsteady of gait, wild of mien,
the tragedian walked hour by hour upon the very brink of death. And
all that time his two friends watched and waited yet dared not show
themselves.

The night was oppressively hot. The summer air was charged with pent-up
forces, and while it was still dark these sought opportunity to wreak
themselves upon the thirsting earth. The moon and stars were hid; all
the heavens were a dense mass of pitch; presently came lightning and
peal upon peal of thunder. It was the prelude to a terrific storm and
the man by the verge of the river welcomed it with every fiber of his
being.

The words of _Lear_ were yet unborn. But in such a night and tempest
of the soul was to walk that figure which this unhappy man was one day
to teach the ages to pity. His head was bare and unbent to the storm;
a hurricane lashed the upturned face; he was drenched to the skin; and
yet this rage of heaven was as nought to the tumult in the mind of one
poor tragedian.

And like their friend, wholly undefended from this wild fury of the
elements, William Kemp and John Heming stood cowering a little way off
in the lee of a wall. All the long night through, in spite of darkness
and tempest, they never left him. And when at last came the dawn, and
with it some abatement of the frenzy of the heavens, they stood with
him still by the bank of the grim river.

Drenched to the skin, and utterly weary and wretched as they were, they
did not once allow Richard Burbage to pass out of their sight. Wherever
he went they must go also; to all that he did they must be a party. Yet
only in the last resort must they venture to declare themselves to him.

The slow hours passed. Richard Burbage still lingered by that river
which in one brief instant would have eased him of his pain. But at
last, just as the hour of eight was told by the churches of the city,
resolve appeared to brace and quicken the exhausted frame. A new
purpose, a new strength enfolded that unhappy figure. Burbage suddenly
started to walk briskly along the river bank in the direction of
Richmond.

Hungry, exhausted, profoundly miserable, his two comrades continued to
follow him. All night had they been waiting for some such manifestation
of design, for this was a man of powerful and resolute character. It
was now more imperative than ever that this vigilance should not relax.
They knew not what secret spring of action had moved him. And in his
present mood there was nothing of which he was not capable.

On and on he walked, briskly now and with an appearance of
ever-increasing resolve. Through fair meadows and riverside gardens
and hamlets they passed. By ten o’clock, they had left the river below
them and were ascending the steep and gloriously wooded slopes of
Richmond Hill.

Every fiber of the tragedian’s being seemed now in the thrall of his
new purpose. Not once did he tarry or look back. All unaware that he
was being so closely followed, he turned at the top of the hill into
Richmond Park.

It was a morning such as makes of earth a paradise. The air was cool,
fragrant, delicious after the great storm of the night. Long shafts of
gold light pierced the branches of the trees; the wet bracken shone
with crystals; the sky was one wide unbroken promise of a gorgeous
noon; the deer flitted in and out of the clean-washed spaces, between
low-hanging canopies of leaves. Earth was rejoicing this morning of
July in the solace and refreshment that the night had brought to her.
All was well with her now. Her fainting energies had been renewed.
And all was now well with one among her children, one poor and frail
tragedian.

The squat, rather ungainly figure, striding wide as though the boards
of the playhouse were still its theater, neither passed nor faltered in
its course. Bared head upflung, a curious rigidity in the face, there
was high purpose in every movement now.

Richard Burbage sought the broad path that led to the Queen’s palace.
And no sooner had he come to it, than he greatly increased the pace at
which he walked. Indeed, as the row of imposing turrets of the royal
demesne came into view at a turn in the road, he almost broke into a
run.

William Kemp and John Heming, so exhausted by now that they could
scarcely drag one foot after the other, suddenly awoke with a kind of
bewildered dismay to the fact that the Queen’s palace was, beyond a
doubt, the goal of their quarry. Breathlessly, they followed ever in
his wake, but in the last hundred yards or so, he had gained upon them
considerably.

Before the gate of the palace, however, Richard Burbage had to call a
halt. Certain formalities had to be observed before the halberdiers
on guard could be induced to pass a stranger through. And to their
question of who this stranger was and what was his pleasure, the two
comrades of the actor were able to come up to the gate just in time to
hear his reply.

“I am Richard Burbage, the tragedian, and I desire to see the Queen
without delay on a matter of the most urgent importance.”

Moreover, these words were spoken in that magnificently rotund and
authoritative voice that never failed to send a thrill through the
Globe Theatre.

And even now in these strange circumstances, it did not fail of its
effect. The guards of the Queen were no more than mortal men. And this
man with great eyes burning in an ashen face was more than mortal now.
He was in the thrall of a divine idea. It was not for those on a lower
plane of being to deny such an imperious instancy. Without delay,
Richard Burbage, the tragedian, was permitted to pass through the gate.

William Kemp and John Heming stood at the threshold of the Queen’s
palace to watch the tragedian pass from their view. But when they also
were asked by the sentinels at the gate who they were and what they
sought, they did not venture to proclaim either their business or
themselves.

They drew off silently a little way into the bracken, there to await
the issue. Sick at heart, overcome with despair, they flung their
completely exhausted bodies into the wet grass.




CHAPTER XXXVI


THE Queen was taking counsel already with the Lord Treasurer, Cecil,
her all-wise and all-powerful minister. This morning, she was in a
harsh and vengeful mood. Many were the plots she had known in the
course of a troubled life against the security of that person for whose
well-being she had so great a reverence. And each one, as it occurred,
had the effect of hardening that naturally ruthless temper to which,
like others of her race, she was never afraid to give free play.

The young man, Gervase Heriot, had been proved guilty upon that which
was held to be good and sufficient evidence, of a plot against her
life. He had been condemned to death by the Court of Star Chamber
sitting in camera. But by the wanton and wicked connivance of the
young daughter of Sir John Feversham, in whose custody he was held in
Nottingham Castle against the time of his execution, Heriot had been
able to break out of his prison. Subsequently, the condemned man,
in the company of this wicked girl, had wandered about the country
many weeks, finally falling in with one Shakespeare, an actor and
writer for the theater, who, well knowing they were proscribed, had
actively befriended them. Moreover, with unforgivable effrontery,
this play-actor had chosen to make public confession of his guilt at a
singularly ill-chosen time.

The Queen was not in a mood to hear of leniency in this heinous matter.
But Cecil, the Lord Treasurer, was a very wise man, deliberate in
speech, tardy in judgment. And the view he held was at direct variance
with that of his august mistress.

The Lord Treasurer had already brought the cool and detached mind of
a statesman to bear upon a most difficult problem. The actors in this
unhappy drama were nothing to him in themselves. Heriot was a man of
family, with a considerable estate in the west of England; the girl
was the daughter of Sir John Feversham, a man of good reputation, who
had rendered thirty years of honest service to the Queen. The man
Shakespeare was by profession an actor, and of him there was nothing
more to be said. Indeed, as far as the Lord Treasurer was concerned,
there was nothing more to be said of any of the persons of the drama.
As mere private individuals, they had not the least interest for
him; the merits of their cause concerned him but little, yet public
expediency, that and only that, was a thing of paramount importance
in his eyes. And when all was said, this was certainly a plaguy ill
matter, and it had given my lord a very anxious night.

It seemed that Pembroke, a man whom Cecil regarded as a person of
weight, had expressed a very definite opinion in regard to the case.
According to Pembroke, the man Shakespeare was widely known and
esteemed not in London merely, but also throughout the length and
breadth of the kingdom. He had behaved with the gravest unwisdom,
but Pembroke held staunchly to the view that his action was not of a
character to incur the inclemency of the law. Moreover, the play-actor
had the excuse that he sought an occasion to establish the innocence of
a deeply wronged man.

Yet here was a very sore point with the statesmanlike soul of the Lord
Treasurer. Heriot had been condemned by the Court of Star Chamber, and
Cecil had not the least desire that the case should be re-heard. At the
best, the whole affair constituted one of those unsavory businesses
which it is ever the aim of true statecraft to keep out of the light
of day. To this point of view, however, Pembroke had made the cogent
rejoinder that since the whole story had been given to the world, it
was no longer possible to treat it as a mystery.

Doubtless it was this fact which rendered Shakespeare’s action
unpardonable in the sight of the Queen. She, too, had a faculty of
statesmanship, and she was well able to appreciate the point involved;
but also she had a woman’s power of illogical resentment, and in her
view not the least part of the player’s crime was the inconvenience it
caused.

Cecil, having duly taken all the circumstances into account, was
already strongly in favor of mercy. It would be wise, in his view, to
grant a pardon to the player. The pressure of public opinion was likely
to be great, and in the opinion of Cecil that was a cardinal matter.
But the Queen was obdurate. She was incensed by the audacity of the
man. Great care had been used to keep the whole of this ugly business
a close secret, but all precaution had been rendered nugatory by this
man’s amazing indiscretion in regard to things that did not well bear
the light of day.

“My lord,” said the Queen, with an air of finality, “what I have said,
I have said. This man shall make payment for his wicked folly.”

“Be it so, your grace,” said the minister, with a sad shake of the head.

He knew how vain it was to persist when once the Queen had made up
her mind. She had all a Tudor’s despotism. The statesman shrugged his
shoulders disconsolately. The man Shakespeare had certainly behaved
like a stark fool, and richly merited any fate that could overtake him,
for my Lord Treasurer’s was that practical order of mind that hates a
fool quite as much as it hates a rogue. The one was intelligible, but
the other was an affront to the human race. Still, the man Shakespeare
had many highly placed friends. And if Cecil himself had little use
for the order of things the man represented, he recognized, with that
large grasp of mind in which none of his age excelled him, that this
play-actor stood for human amenity. And that in itself was a thing that
even the most cynical of statesmen cannot afford to neglect.

The Lord Treasurer was about to withdraw from the Queen’s presence,
when one of her gentlemen came into the room.

“Madam,” he said, “under your good pleasure, one Richard Burbage, a
tragedian, would speak with you upon a matter of great urgency.”

“A pox take him,” said the Queen, roughly. “A pox take all comedians
and all tragedians, too. I would that I had never set eyes on any of
the tribe. Send the rogue about his business with a flea in his ear.
Or stay--send him to us and we will hear what he has to say. And God
help the rogue, if he speaks amiss.”

The gentleman withdrew. A minute afterwards, he ushered into the room
with great ceremony one Richard Burbage, a tragedian.

It happens continually, in the process of nature, that a man’s calling
is declared in his personality. The soldier, the clergyman, the
lawyer and the horse-dealer are cases in point. But no man could have
borne clearer evidence of the unhappy estate to which it had pleased
providence to call him than Richard Burbage, the tragedian. His gaunt
face was haggard, his bloodshot eyes were wild, his somber dress was
muddy and in sad disorder.

“Well, my man, what is your pleasure?” said the Queen sourly enough, as
soon as this odd figure appeared before her.

The tragedian showed no undue haste to reply to the question. There was
a slow force in him for which the Queen and Cecil were not prepared.
And when he spoke, it was with the calm precision of one secure of soul.

“Your grace,” said the tragedian, and for all his wild eyes he looked
steadily at the Queen, “it is my desire to offer my life for the life
of William Shakespeare.”

The mood of the Queen was by no means agreeable. Nevertheless, these
simple and considered words struck home to the heart of the woman.
They had no savor of vainglory. They were the fruit of a rare spirit,
and she who was accustomed to judge men was quick, almost in her own
despite, to recognize the source from which they sprang.

“Tell me why you offer it, Master Burbage,” said the Queen. “Tell me
why life has so little savor for you, that you would yield it for that
of a rival actor?”

“I offer my life, your grace, for that of one so far beyond myself
that, although I enjoy my days as much as any man alive, there can be
no higher privilege than to give them for such a one as he. And the day
will surely come when the whole world will rise up and call me blessed.”

These were wild words for prosaic ears. There was almost a core of
madness in them, yet it was impossible to doubt the grim sincerity of
this fanatic.

The Queen looked at the Lord Treasurer, and the Lord Treasurer looked
at the Queen. One fact at once shone clear in the minds of both. It was
no ordinary man who offered life itself on the altar of friendship.

“The truth is,” said the Queen at last, “you mad players, who spend
your days in mouthing bombast and in tearing passions to tatters,
get a kind of swelling in your brains. The truth is, Master Burbage,
you over-color all the facts of life. Your speech in consequence is
high-flown, your behavior nonsensical, your appearance ridiculous.”

“It may be so, your grace.” The player spoke slowly and calmly, and yet
without any great show of humility. “But I would entreat your grace not
to overlook the fact that Richard Burbage would pay away his life for
the boon he craves.”

“Yes, sirrah, I appreciate that,” said the Queen. “And to me, Master
Burbage, I confess it makes you a subject for confinement in a
mad-house. How say you, my lord?”

But my lord was thinking so deeply that he failed to answer the
question of his august mistress. It was the business of his life to
estimate men and things; and for perhaps the first time in his career,
he was face to face with men and things with which his recondite
knowledge and his remarkable faculty seemed powerless to deal.

“Yes, you bombastical players have an inflammation of the mind, there
is no doubt about it,” said the Queen. “In your opinion, Master
Burbage, I do not doubt the author of ‘As You Like It’ is the greatest
man alive.”

“Yes, your grace,” said the tragedian, very simply, “he is undoubtedly
that in his own province, and as, in my humble judgment his province is
the highest of all, I cannot honestly claim less than that precedence
for him. But, of course, I speak, your grace, as but a strutter of
boards and a mouther of bombast. Yet in my humble opinion, a man
must be what he is, and be that only, and with all his heart. Nature
fashioned me for the theater. Therefore, my life is consecrated to the
theater, which for me is the sum of all things, the highest good. And
therefore I say to your grace, that never again will the theater look
upon the like of William Shakespeare, who to me, and to many another in
this age and in ages yet to come, must ever remain the brightest jewel
in Gloriana’s crown. And if it be given to Richard Burbage to purchase
with his own life the priceless things that lie as yet unborn in the
womb of our immortal poet’s invention, it will be a great end for a
poor tragedian.”

These singular words were spoken plainly and bluntly enough, but with
an air of deference. And they were absolutely sincere. Whatever the
Queen’s views might be concerning the sanity of play-actors, she was
compelled to recognize this speech, perhaps more by its manner than by
its matter, as the product of a powerful and well-ordered mind. It was
now the turn of the Queen to ponder deeply. In spite of herself, she
could not help being affected by the demeanor of this man.

Now it almost seemed as if Providence had set itself to work on the
poet’s behalf, and was determined to make the most of a favorable turn.
For that was the moment chosen by it for the announcement to be made to
the Queen that two most distinguished persons, the Earl of Pembroke and
Sir Walter Raleigh to wit, most humbly craved audience of her Grace.

“I will see them,” said the Queen, peremptorily. “Let them be brought
to me.” She then added sourly to the Lord Treasurer, “They are upon
this same plaguy business, I’ll warrant.”

Presently appeared these two distinguished gentlemen, true ornaments of
their age. Each was a singularly handsome man, not yet in middle life;
each had the marked ease of bearing of those who are very familiar
with their surroundings. The Queen received them with the rough humor,
caustic, witty and by no means unpleasant, which she inherited from her
father and kept for her intimates.

“Well, my friends,” she said, “I’ll wager a tester I know already what
is your good pleasure.”

“Your grace were infinitely less in wisdom were the case otherwise,”
said Pembroke.

“You have come to plead the cause, I do not doubt, of a very foolish
and wicked man.”

The silence of Pembroke gave assent to the harsh words.

“Well, my lord, I hope you are prepared as is Master Burbage here to
yield your life for him.”

“If it were our privilege, your grace, to do that, we should be greater
men than we are like to be--with all respect to Sir Walter here--in the
eyes of posterity.”

“A pox upon posterity! Who cares a fig for it? The hour in which we
live alone matters to all of us. But tell me, my lord, why do you
choose to concern yourself with the matter of this foolish play-actor?
And also I would have you make known your wishes in regard to him.”

“Touching your grace’s first question,” said Pembroke, “I am honored by
the friendship of one whom I esteem beyond all other men, and for whose
deliverance I will gladly pay into the treasury as round a sum as I can
well afford.”

The Queen gave a grunt of disgust. The raddled face wore a very
unpleasant look.

“Humph,” said she. “That seems little enough, my lord. Master Burbage
here offers his life.”

Pembroke turned instantly to the tragedian, with his most courtier-like
bow.

“Master Burbage does himself infinite honor,” he said. “I offer the
half of my estate and he offers the whole of his, therefore is he twice
the man that I am in the sight of heaven.”

“A well-turned speech, my lord,” said the Queen. She then fixed her
sour smile upon Raleigh. “Tell me, Sir Walter,” she said, “what is the
price you are prepared to pay for this foolish and wicked player’s
ransom?”

The point-blank question was answered readily enough.

“The half of my fortune, your grace,” said Raleigh, “even as my Lord
Pembroke.”

“But Master Burbage here,” said the Queen, acidly, “is prepared to pay
the whole of his life.”

“Your grace,” said Raleigh with shining eyes, “Master Burbage is indeed
a man happy in his valor and noble in the scope and compass of his
nature. Our poet is fortunate in such a friend, yet such high constancy
is not less than his deserts.”

This frank speech gave pause to the Queen. When the worst had been said
of her, a robust commonsense remained the keystone of her character.
These were men she was bound to respect. And to hear them express such
unqualified opinions in regard to this play-actor had the effect in
some degree of modifying her attitude. Besides, she herself believed
the playwright to be a very remarkable man. But the combined testimony
of such men as Pembroke and Raleigh made it clear that he was even more
remarkable than she knew him to be.

“My Lord Burleigh,” she said abruptly, addressing Cecil, “let this man
Shakespeare be brought to us. We will hear what defence he will venture
of his froward conduct.”

The Lord Treasurer quitted the room at once, in obedience to this
command. Burbage, Pembroke and Raleigh would have followed him, had not
the Queen ordered them to remain where they were.




CHAPTER XXXVII


THERE was a long five minutes of most uncomfortable silence between
the four curiously diverse persons in the Queen’s morning chamber.
Gloriana was not disposed to conversation just now. For one thing she
was deeply offended. And at the best of times she was a difficult
woman, and age and infirmity had made her morose. Her long life as
a reigning sovereign had been neither more nor less than an orgy of
despotic power. And such a condition does not make for human amenity,
particularly in the case of one in whom a love of tyranny has become
second nature.

The plain truth was, that Gloriana was hard and cruel. And these three
men were only too well aware of the fact. Each of them felt a grave
uneasiness in regard to the fate that was likely to overtake the man
for whose life and liberty they were there to plead.

At last, the tapestried door of the chamber opened to admit the
returning Cecil, who gravely ushered in the culprit.

The playwright entered the room with a serenity, an unconcern that
could only have been exhibited in such circumstances by one who
breathes an air which is not the common ether of mankind. The Queen,
a close enough observer when it pleased her to be so, was impressed
by the almost majestic simplicity of this man. His three friends, so
jealous for his reputation, could only rejoice at it.

“Master Shakespeare,” said the Queen, arrogantly, “it had not been
our intention to hear you in your own defence. We had meant to leave
the whole matter to those who know in what sort to deal with it. But
three very good and true friends of yours have come forward to plead
your cause: one, as I understand, an honest man who follows your own
calling, has even gone to the length of offering his own life in
exchange for yours; and my Lord Pembroke and Sir Walter Raleigh each
offers the half of his fortune as the price of your ransom.”

For the moment the self-possession of the poet forsook him, so deeply
was he moved by the loyalty and the self-sacrificing devotion of his
friends. He lowered his head in the manner of one completely overcome.
The sensitive lips trembled, the deep-set eyes filled with tears.

“You have good friends, Master Shakespeare.” The tone of the Queen was
so matter-of-fact, that she might have been merely discussing a plain
affair of business. “And no man can have friends so true as these and
so honorable in reputation without having a character sufficiently
worthy to entitle him to them. Therefore, it is for this reason, and
for none other, that I have decided to hear you in your own behalf.
But, pray understand, I hold out no prospect of leniency. You have been
guilty of such wicked folly that I do not doubt that a charge of high
treason will lie against you.”

By this time, the playwright was once more completely master of
himself. He stood to confront the Queen simply and without fear.

“Let us hear your defence, Master Shakespeare, if defence you will
venture to make.”

“Your grace,” said the player, in his gentle voice, “on my own part, I
offer no defence. Freely and fully I accept all responsibility for any
hurt I have done to justice. But having done none that I know, I take
my stand upon the innocence of my intention.”

The light of anger flamed in the Queen’s eyes.

“Don’t use so many words, sirrah,” she said, sharply. “Come to the
issue. I am a plain woman, and I ask for plain words and few. For what
reason, I will ask you, have you embraced these devious ways?”

The player met with calm eyes the harsh glance of the Sovereign.

“If it be treason, your grace, to befriend the innocent,” he said, “I
will gladly pay the penalty of my crime.”

The eyes of the Queen sparkled ominously.

“The innocent, sirrah! Pray, what do you mean by the innocent? Is it
the part of innocence, I ask you, to engage in a plot to take away my
life?”

“No, your grace,” said the player. “And may it never be permitted to
one of your subjects to say otherwise.”

“Then may I ask why you take the part of those who have done so?”

“I have but taken the part, your grace, of one accused wrongfully.”

“Do not impugn the Queen’s justice, sirrah!”

“God forbid! But, in this instance, I make so bold as to affirm that a
grievous miscarriage has occurred.”

“God’s blood, sirrah!” cried the Queen, “I would have you be wary. If
you dare to impugn the integrity of our courts, and you cannot make
good your ill words in every particular, you shall make heavy payment
for such a contumacy.”

The player showed neither hesitation nor alarm, yet the hostility of
the Queen’s demeanor must have daunted all save the very stout of heart.

“Far be it from me, your grace,” he said, “to impugn the integrity of
that which no man in this realm should ever call in question. But no
human assembly can be wholly free of error. And in this most grievous
matter, I swear to your grace before God that there has been a truly
terrible miscarriage of justice.”

The eyes of the Queen grew dark with menace.

“Prove your words, sirrah. And if ye fail, God help you.”

“Readily will I prove them,” said the player, with a certain triumph in
his voice. “I hold the proof in my hand.”

As he spoke, he struck his hand into his doublet and produced the
written confession of Simon Heriot. He gave the paper to the Queen.

With a cold fury sparkling in her eyes, Elizabeth handed the document
to the Lord Treasurer. She commanded him to read it to her.

Surprise, excitement, incredulity were evoked in that tyrannical bosom
by the minister’s perusal of this document. But not for a moment did
her native keenness of mind desert her.

“Tell me, my lord,” she said, “is this an honest and genuine document?”

Cecil scrutinized the paper closely.

“It bears no evidence, your grace, as far as one can at present see,”
said the Lord Treasurer, cautiously, “of its being a counterfeit. But
it would be well, perhaps, to have further and more expert testimony
upon the subject.”

“Let this man, Simon Heriot, be at once summoned,” said the Queen.

“Alas! your grace,” said the player, “Simon Heriot has been ten days
dead. This is his dying testimony.”

The Queen shook her head suspiciously.

“I like not this matter,” she said. “Who are the others named in this
conspiracy?”

“One William Muir, your grace, and one Robert Grisewood.”

“Let them be brought to me instantly.”

“Unhappily, your grace, William Muir has fled the country.”

“Has he so!” said the Queen, sternly. “Then what of this man Grisewood?
So lately as yesterday, with my own eyes, I saw him here. My lord, let
the man be brought to us immediately.”

Cecil left the room in order to carry out these instructions. But in a
few minutes, he had returned with the information that Grisewood was
not to be seen anywhere within the precincts of the palace. Having
regard, however, to the great urgency of the matter, the Lord Treasurer
announced that he had already dispatched a troop of horse to fetch the
man from his lodgings in the Strand.

“It is well,” said the Queen, grimly.

With a curt nod, she dismissed all save Cecil from her presence, saying
she would confer with them again presently.




CHAPTER XXXVIII


THE four men, Shakespeare, Burbage, Pembroke, Raleigh, waited in the
Queen’s ante-chamber, there to abide the issue. Long they waited. It
was a far cry in those days from Richmond to the Strand and back again.
Shakespeare alone was without concern. The others were gravely uneasy.
The Queen’s vengeful temper was much to be feared, and Cecil was by no
means a person to be trusted.

The friends of the player were convinced that he had adduced a genuine
proof of the innocence of Gervase Heriot. They were satisfied,
moreover, that he had been inspired by no other motive than an
overmastering desire to affirm justice, truth and mercy. Nevertheless,
the turn things were taking made them painfully anxious in regard to
the outcome of the whole affair.

The Queen, for all the native vigor of her understanding, was a mass of
prejudice and caprice. She was bitterly resentful of the inconvenience
that had been caused by the player’s wanton interference. Again, a man
like Grisewood, with his back to the wall, could be trusted to fight
tooth and nail for his life. He would lie, that was certain. He was
bound to deny the authenticity of the slender evidence that had been
adduced in a manner so fortuitous.

The upshot was likely to be that the affair would resolve itself into a
battle between a villain and an honest man. It would become a question
in that event as to whose word the Queen would accept. Already the
player was out of favor. And when it came to a question of holding
the balance even between him and another, when it came to weighing
judicially the words of each, it was most probable that the mind of a
capricious woman would prove incapable of giving him fair play.

Yes, the friends of the player, as they sat silent in the Queen’s
antechamber to await the arrival of Grisewood were uneasy indeed. The
man was known as a cunning, plausible, unscrupulous adventurer. He was
not likely to be over-nice as to the means he used to save his neck.
And one and all felt that already the case was prejudged.

Presently Pembroke and Raleigh, who were officers of the Household,
withdrew. The playwright and his friend the tragedian were left
together. The hearts of both were too full for speech. The time passed
very slowly. Each hour seemed interminable. The day wore on but still
there came no summons to the Queen’s presence. After a while, food
was brought to them at the instance of a friendly official. But they
were without appetite, and did not touch it. Their minds were wholly
preoccupied with the subject of life and death.

In all that long time, which seemed interminable, not a word was
exchanged between the playwright and the tragedian. Yet in the manner
of a pair of children, they sat very close together, the hand of
Burbage holding that of his friend. He was his elder brother, his
protector; he felt an overmastering desire to shield that shy and
delicate spirit from the harsh rebuffs of fate.

At last, about four o’clock of the afternoon, came the dread summons
to the Queen. It was conveyed by the Lord Treasurer in person. There
was nothing to learn from that lofty and formal mien. The measured
deportment, the detached air told nothing. He who so often was called
to be the arbiter of life and death in the daily routine of his high
office betrayed not the least emotion. Indeed, the grim question now at
issue appeared to touch him not at all.

The Queen was taking her ease on a gorgeous gilt couch. One of her
ladies, who was working a sampler in silk, was seated on a low stool
at her side. She was a dark and handsome young woman with restless,
brilliant and piercing eyes. As soon as the playwright entered the
room, they met his in a kind of challenge, half of cynical interest,
half of mockery. A slow, rather insolent smile curled her lips. For a
very brief instant, the poet was obviously disconcerted. But almost
at once, he had exercised the whole force of his will and was able to
attend that other woman who held his life in her hand.

The Queen sat up on her couch.

“Master Shakespeare,” she said, “I have to inform you that the man,
Grisewood, is dead.”

“Dead!” gasped the player.

“Yes,” said the Queen, “he is dead. He has been found at his lodging
with his throat cut. And there can be little doubt, as I am given to
understand, that he has died by his own hand.”

The player stood in silence, looking straight in front of him. There
came a violent surge and onrush of his thoughts. In the sensitive and
generous mind, relief for the good riddance of a bad man was tempered
with an emotion of pity for an end so ignoble.

“I have to say this, Master Shakespeare.” The voice of the Queen, which
sounded very far away, broke in upon the heavy tumult of his thoughts.
“The death of this man, Grisewood, removed a most material witness. He
alone could have proved or disproved your statement.”

By now, however, the playwright had regained full command of himself.
Calmly, he sustained the force of the Queen’s gaze. The somber yet
wonderful eyes were fixed on the raddled and rather peevish face.

“Under the favor of your grace,” he said, speaking very slowly and in
the manner of one who chooses his words with the utmost care, “Sir
Robert Grisewood has already attested to the truth of the statement
which I have made.”

“In what way, sirrah? By what means?” said the Queen, sharply.

“By the taking of his own life,” said the playwright. “It is a clear
confession of the knowledge that he is undone.”

“How should he have any such knowledge?”

“He was present yesterday, your grace, in the pavilion, when I
rehearsed the story of his crime. I marked his livid face among the
audience. It is one I shall never forget.”

The Queen nodded her head, but did not speak.

“My eyes were fixed, your grace, upon that man’s face when I said I
held the proof of his guilt. I saw his cheek turn to the color of his
ruff. And by that I knew there was confirmation of my statement had
confirmation been required.”

“The man was an arrant coward,” said the Queen, contemptuously. “But
such evidence of his guilt does not convince me. How say you, my lord?”
She turned to Cecil peremptorily.

The statesman did not answer the question immediately. For the moment,
that powerful and deep-seeing mind was much preoccupied. And when
answer he did, it was with the air of a man enfolded by a sense of
profound and settled conviction.

“By leave of your grace,” he said, “and under your good favor, I am
bound to confess that I share the view of this matter which is held by
Master Shakespeare. In my humble opinion, the death of this man in such
circumstances is an irrefragable evidence of his guilt.”

The Queen was now sitting very upright. The lean features had assumed a
look of sharpest inquiry. A round oath fell from her lips.

“By God’s body, my lord, I begin to think you are in the right!”

She was a woman of capricious temper. The milk of human kindness flowed
an uncertain stream in that sterile heart. But her ears were never
quite deaf to the voice of reason. Moreover, there were occasions when
a sense of justice overtook her.

It began almost to seem that this occasion was likely to be one of them.

“Tell me, my lord,” she demanded, “is this to say that you accept,
as a matter of sober verity, that the handwriting of Simon Heriot is
contained in this paper?”

“Yes, your grace, I am of that opinion.”

“You are satisfied that the man, Simon Heriot, wrote this confession
with his own hand?”

“Yes, your grace, that is the view I hold. In the first place, I have
taken the opportunity to compare the writing in the paper with that of
another document in the same hand. And may it please your grace that I
am fully satisfied that they are one and the same. And, further, I will
add that the death in such circumstances of such a man convinces me
that a grievous miscarriage of justice has been perpetrated in the case
of the young man, Gervase Heriot.”

Another round oath rose to the lips of the Queen. She got up
impulsively from her couch. The heart of a woman had begun to stir in
that withered and grotesque frame.

“My lord, if that is your opinion, we must go further into this,” she
said. “Upon my life, we must not send to the ax those who have done
nothing to deserve it.”

“To that, your grace, I say amen with all my heart,” said the Lord
Treasurer, assuming an air of simple human kindness, which really
became him very well indeed.

“Let this young man, Heriot, attend us here and now,” said the Queen.

“Unfortunately, both Mr. Heriot and Mistress Feversham have already
been removed to the Tower,” said the Lord Treasurer, “until the
pleasure of your Majesty be further known.”

“Let the young man be brought to us at once,” said the Queen. “And the
girl also.”

“The commands of your Majesty shall be obeyed,” said the Lord
Treasurer. “Both prisoners shall be sent for immediately.”

With a low bow, the minister quitted the room.

A subtle but marked change had suddenly taken place in the Queen’s
manner. She turned to the playwright with a certain kindness in the
hard eyes.

“Belike, sirrah,” she said, “your play may prove a comedy, after all.”

The playwright stood before her in silence with bent head. In the
strong frame, with its tense outlines, was a profound humility which
the Queen was wholly at a loss to understand.

“How say you, sirrah? Would you not have it so?”

“Life is never a comedy, your grace,” said the playwright, speaking
very gently, almost as one who thinks aloud.

“A dark saying,” said the Queen, “How say you, Mary?” She turned, with
an ironical air, to the young woman who was working so busily upon the
sampler. “Perhaps Master Shakespeare will expound it for us out of the
infinite store of his wisdom. You don’t find life a very tragic matter,
eh, my girl, you who have the whole world at your feet?”

The august lady gave her gentlewoman a light box on the ear.

Mistress Fytton, whose dark and brilliant beauty had its sinister
aspect, rose from her stool with a sigh and a little laugh.

“It is the business of a poet, your grace, to be melancholy,” said
Mistress Mary.

“Yes, I had not thought of that,” said the Queen. “But I suspect, Miss
Malapert, you know more of poets than I do.”

“God forbid, your grace,” Mistress Mary made a deep but mocking curtsy.

“You impudent hussy!”

And this time, the royal lady gave her gentlewoman so sound a box on
the ear, that it rang through the room.




CHAPTER XXXIX


GERVASE and Anne had been taken the previous evening from Richmond to
the Tower. They were placed in a prison as dismal as on that occasion
of their first meeting, which now seemed so far away in the past. But
Gervase was better able now to prepare himself for the grim fate that
too surely awaited him.

Both these children of destiny had had many weeks in which to make
ready for that which was now to befall them. Their souls were numb.
Long ago, they had given up all hope of life. Indeed, they had almost
given up all desire of it, such had been their sufferings. The only
boon they now craved of Providence was that they might be allowed to
die together.

In the course of the afternoon of the first day of their imprisonment,
word was brought to them that the Queen desired to see them at once,
that they were to be carried before her immediately, and that she
herself would there and then decide their fate.

They looked for no clemency. Unknown to each other, the prisoners
were borne again to the palace at Richmond, each in a separate closed
carriage, jealously guarded by soldiers with drawn swords. The gorgeous
sunlight streamed in through the windows of their coaches, the dust
of midsummer whirled around the wheels, but their minds were withdrawn
from all outward and visible things. They felt they were going to their
death. God grant that it be given to them to embrace it together!

On their arrival at the palace, shortly after six o’clock, they were
taken at once to an antechamber, which was next the Queen’s own
apartment. Here they met again. And the solemn-faced, harsh-looking men
who had them in their care had enough humanity to stand apart, while
Anne yielded herself to the arms of Gervase.

“Have you the dagger?” she whispered, shaking convulsively.

“Alas! they have found it,” said Gervase. “If only I had it now, I
would plunge it into your heart ... my life!”

“Oh, if only you had it!”

They had not long to wait for the dread summons to the Queen. All too
soon appeared the Lord Treasurer. At once, he ushered them into the
room where the Queen sat.

Gervase had cast off his disguise. No longer was he the aged and
bearded Italian music master, but a trim and rather fine young man,
dressed very soberly, to be sure, yet affecting a style not out of
place at that Court, of which less than a year ago he had been an
ornament.

Anne remained, however, in her charming boy’s dress of the previous
day. The lean grace of outline was rendered more poignant by the thin
brown cheeks, the bright, grave eyes, the head of close-clipt curls.
In the wistfulness of this frail figure, chastened by the long night
of the soul, there was a pathos which struck at the hearts of all who
beheld it.

Besides, the Queen and the Lord Treasurer, there was one other person
in the room. Gervase and Anne, for all that they were passing through
a nightmare of dull terror, were sensible of a presence in the
background. It was their friend the play-actor, grave of look and yet
unfearing; gentle, pitiful, and yet secure of soul. Somehow, the sight
of him who had done so much, who had put his fortunes to the proof,
nay, even life itself, that he might help them, moved these hapless
lovers to new courage.

From the gentle face of this man, all compassion, all tenderness, their
eyes sought that of the Queen. That was a very different countenance.
And yet, as those hawklike eyes met theirs, a curious light ran
in them. It was almost as if, in spite of herself, Elizabeth had
been moved by the sight of this shadowy, yet dauntless thing, this
_Rosalind_ who yesterday had charmed her with her coquetry, her grace,
her sorcery of voice and look.

“Mistress Feversham”--the harsh voice seemed to assault their ears, so
sharp it was, so merciless--“I am given to understand you are a woman.
But let me say that, in the moment I saw you first, I knew that you
were that.” Here the voice fell away with the oddest suddenness. A
tense moment passed in which it seemed that the sovereign could hardly
trust herself to speak. “And, by God, you are a brave woman! ... a very
brave woman, even if you are a very froward one.”

The Queen turned abruptly to the Lord Treasurer. There was a sour and
cruel smile on the thin lips.

“Do we understand,” she said, “that there is a boon Mistress Feversham
would crave at our hands?”

A silence followed the question--a silence in which Elizabeth and her
minister looked without pity upon the shrinking pair who stood before
them.

In the next instant, Anne had cast herself on her knees at the Queen’s
feet.

But it was left to Gervase to speak. And he spoke as one who proudly
asks a favor to which he feels he has clearly established a claim.

“Your grace.” The young man sank to his knees. “We crave of your mercy
that we be permitted to die together.”

The Queen’s answer was a swift glance at the Lord Treasurer. And then,
perhaps, it may have been that she felt a sudden sting of remorse for
the cruel nature of the play she was enacting. Yet the face of her
adviser was as cold as stone. It bore no trace of feeling. And it may
have been that such an impassiveness smote the heart of one who, after
all, was a woman, with all a woman’s emotions.

Involuntarily, as it seemed, the Queen turned her eyes from Cecil
toward that other, that more human witness of the scene. Unconsciously,
as if at the beck of an invisible power, her imperious gaze sought the
mild one of him whose life was passed in the making of plays. His face,
averted from a sight it could not endure, was melted with tears.

Of a sudden, something stirred in the Queen’s heart. It was such a
pang of nature as had not touched it for many a long year. The time
was surely at hand in which to make an end of the cruel comedy. Upon a
quick impulse in which the woman alone bore a part, and the tyrannical
arbitress of life and death had no share, she raised the unhappy girl
in her arms and gravely kissed her on the forehead.

“You are a brave thing,” cried the harsh, rough voice. “By God, you are
a brave thing. You shall suffer no more. Our pardon shall be granted to
you, and also to this young man against whom as we are informed----”

But the sentence so fraught with destiny was never finished. The frail
form had grown stiff and cold in the arms of the Queen.




CHAPTER XL


IT happened that one afternoon of early autumn, William Shakespeare
rode out to Richmond, as he had done so many times of late, and sought
poor Anne where she still lay in the house of a good friend. Her bed
was in a charming chamber, from which she could see the sunlit Thames
winding through its green valley. Gervase, thin and careworn, was
kneeling by the bed, and his arms were holding its frail occupant.

For many days Anne had lain between life and death. But the fire of
youth was in her veins. She had fine courage, moreover, pure strength
of body, therefore Nature fought for her. And in the end Nature
prevailed. Yet long after life itself had conquered, it was feared
that reason, the sovereign goddess, would be dethroned forever in that
finely tempered spirit.

Her friends never gave up hope. Many were the dark and cruel days in
which she hovered upon the verge of that abyss, by comparison with
which death itself is more than kind. And at last, very slowly, very
fitfully, the wisdom, the patience, the devotion of those that watched
over her met with their reward.

When at last it became known that the grimmest of all her perils was
past, there were those of her friends who laid upon a certain famous
man as being the foremost of their number, the happy task of bearing
the tidings to the Queen that all was well with poor _Rosalind_.

The player, humble-minded as he was, would have been the last man in
the world to arrogate to himself any such privilege. But the insistence
of Anne’s friends was strong. Well they knew the valiant part this man
had played. Moreover, the Queen, it seemed, had caused many inquiries
to be made of “the brave thing” who was fighting the sternest of all
her battles. The heart of the woman had been moved by the gallant
story. It may have been that Gloriana felt that honor had been done to
the sex of which she herself was a foremost ornament. She may have felt
that even in an heroic age here was a fitting mother for heroes.

Be that as it may, the heart of the woman had been melted. And that
golden afternoon, William Shakespeare was the bearer of glad tidings
from the Queen in her palace at Greenwich. She was graciously pleased
to grant a full and free pardon to Gervase Heriot and Anne Feversham.

There was a look of joy in the face of the player as he entered her
chamber with the high news. He found her propped up with pillows, thin
as a ghost, but her eyes were no longer wild. By the side of the bed
knelt Gervase. One arm clasped the frail form that now was all his
life; and in one hand he held the newly printed and authentic version
of the tragical history of “Romeo and Juliet” which he was reading to
Anne in his gentle voice.

“Ah, here is the author himself.”

Gervase laid the book down on the counterpane and rose with a shy
smile. The lovers greeted their friend, to whom they owed everything,
with shining eyes. The player’s apology for so unseasonably disturbing
them was humorously tender, but such news admitted no delay.

“I am the bearer of great tidings,” the player cried. “All is forgiven.”

There came a silence, and then “All!” gasped Anne.

“All,” said the player. “All is forgiven you by Gloriana in her
clemency.”

Again a silence.

“But my father!”

The three simple words seemed almost to tear at the heart of the poet.

“All is forgiven him also.”

That also was true.

“But why does he not come to me? Is it that he will not?”

Alas, that was a question the poet dare not answer. The plain truth
was he knew not in what sort to answer it. As soon as the Queen had
been apprised of Sir John Feversham’s complete innocence, almost her
first act had been to order his immediate release from the Tower. But
even when a free pardon had been granted to him and he was once more
at liberty and no longer in danger of losing his head, he was yet a
very unhappy man. He was as one completely overborne by the sense of
his daughter’s crime. Even as she lay in her extremity, he could not be
induced to visit her, nor even to speak of her. And now that the awful
force of her suffering was past, and wan and spent, yet with mind at
last clear and reasonable, poor Anne waited in vain for her father’s
coming. A powerful nature had been wounded to the depths. It was not
the act of filial treachery that Sir John Feversham found unforgivable;
it was the disloyalty to the august sovereign whom he had served all
his days that he found impossible to overpass.

Now it chanced that one man, and he the most devoted among all the
friends of Mistress Anne had had the wit to realize the why and
wherefore of this. Shakespeare saw clearly that even if the outraged
father had been able to forgive, the loyal and devoted subject yet
found it impossible so to do. And no sooner did this tender-hearted
maker of plays realize that such was the case than daring greatly he
went to the Queen.

“That is a matter, Master Shakespeare, in which we may never be able to
move,” was the Queen’s answer. “And yet perhaps....”

For the present, the player felt he must rest content with that.

In the meantime, the author of the tragical history of “Romeo and
Juliet” had to suffer the entreaties of this pair of young lovers that
he should remain and read to them a portion of that wondrous tale of
love which he had given to the world in the spring tide of his own
youth.

The poet was not proof against the importunities of these children of
destiny whom he had come to love with a father’s tenderness. Therefore
he took his book presently from the hands of Gervase and sat at the bed
foot. In his low and clear voice he began to read the immortal story.

Hand in hand, their fingers intertwined, Anne and Gervase listened with
strange rapture. That recital was ever afterwards to be a landmark in
their lives. The romance which ravished their ears had its parallel in
their own experience. They could live again their hours of supremest
exaltation. Was it not all distilled in those magical pages? It has
been the destiny of this story of ill-starred love to evoke the wide
world over the tears of those who have known a great passion. But here
were two who had greatly loved to whom even the author’s own rendering
of the exquisite story brought no tears.

To such a nadir of the spirit had these twin souls descended that it
seemed to them then that they could never weep again. They could never
weep again, yet were they very far from being unhappy. Still, even now
they could hardly realize the nature of the miracle that had happened
to them. Gervase was a free man; life and liberty had been granted to
him; Anne had been given back her reason; and henceforward the only
fetters they were to know were to be the silken one each imposed upon
the other. Yet it was all very hard to realize!

While the poet continued to read his noble invention he was gravely
preoccupied. His thoughts were forever straying from the creatures of
his fancy to that wan and fragile thing propped up with pillows who
looked as if she could never smile nor weep again. If only Sir John
Feversham could come to his daughter now! If only the forgiveness of
that just man could be granted to her! Even as he read, the words of
the Queen were ever in his ears. “It is a matter, Master Shakespeare,
in which we may never be able to move. And yet perhaps...!”

The poet, however, had wrought better than he knew. His plea to
Gloriana had not fallen barren on those august ears. The girl had
earned absolution by her courage, nor had the Queen been slow to make
her pleasure known to Sir John Feversham.

And so it came to pass that the poet was still seated at the bed foot
reading aloud to these children of destiny his entrancing tale of love
when a servant entered the room. A few words were whispered into the
poet’s ear. And then with a sudden startled smile, William Shakespeare
laid down the book on the bed and went hastily out of the room.

It seemed that a miracle had happened. Sir John Feversham had arrived
at that house, was waiting below and was desirous of seeing his
daughter.

Only a very little while was William Shakespeare gone from the room.
He had soon returned, to usher into the sunlit chamber a man who
looked strangely bent and old. His hair was perfectly white. Sir John
Feversham had changed much in appearance. And the events of more than
one lifetime had been crowded into poor Anne’s experience since last
she had seen her father.

At first she did not realize who the frail man was with the snow-white
hair who had come into the room.

It was not indeed until this grave personage informed Anne that he was
come from the Queen with a present and a message that she recognized
her father. And even then it may have been the slow and deep melancholy
of the voice that told her. She gave a little wild cry, and clutched
Gervase with a sudden pang of terror. But there was nought in her
father’s voice nor in his bearing to inspire it now.

With a gesture all humility, as one who knows that the will of man is
little, and that man himself is hardly more than a puppet in the hands
of fate, Sir John Feversham knelt by the bed and gave his daughter a
kiss on the lips.

“It is the token of the Queen’s forgiveness,” he said, “which I am
commanded to bring you.”

Anne shivered. Dry-eyed and in silence, her arms were flung round her
father’s neck. It was as if she also had come to understand that she
was no more than a plaything in the hands of fate.

The Queen’s messenger rose from his knees. And now for all his look of
frailty which was almost pitiful, he had the tense and vital air of a
man of affairs who is proud to serve a great sovereign.

“Further I am bidden by the Queen’s majesty,” he said in his slow and
melancholy speech which was yet like a fine and rare music, “to bestow
upon you, Mistress Anne Feversham, in her name, this chaplet of pearls.”

As Sir John spoke he took a small shagreen case out of the lining of
his cloak. It contained a small necklace.

“At the Queen’s behest, thus do I place it round your throat, Mistress
Anne Feversham. Moreover, it is her Majesty’s express command that you
be well and strong again by Twelfth Night, since noon of that day is
the hour her Majesty has appointed for the celebration of your nuptials
with Mr. Gervase Heriot in the Chapel of her grandfather within the
Abbey at Westminster. The Queen hopes herself to be present on the
occasion. And I am further to inform you that on the eve of that day
Mr. William Shakespeare, to whose efforts on your behalf the late
signal acts of the Royal clemency are wholly due, has undertaken to
present a new interlude to the Queen and the ladies and gentlemen of
her Court. His former ones, the Queen commands me to say,”--Sir John
Feversham bowed to the playwright who with a grave smile bowed to him
again--“have been much admired.”




TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:

Apparent misspelt words have been changed as follows:

  --“glamor” has been changed to “glamour”, page 16;
  --“answerd” has been changed to “answered”, page 114;
  --“numscull” has been changed to “numskull”, page 156;
  --“ab hoc” has been changed to “ad hoc”, page 162;
  --“curtesy” has been changed to “curtsy”, page 310.

All other spelling has been left as typeset.

Hyphenation has not been made consistent across the book.