Part 15

At this exhibition, Tamworth was taken aback. “So,” he said, losing his repellent front, and speaking lower, “You have armed yourselves, have you? Well, we will go.”

There was still a chance that the search would not reveal the presence of Marlowe. The clock marked the hour of eleven. It was more than probable that his friend would be securely shut in the oratory, the existence of which was surely not yet suspected. In any case there was but one course to avert suspicion, and Tamworth arose and passed out of the ordinary with the three men. The distance between the Red Lion and the Prince’s Wardrobe was soon covered. A few moments after, they had traversed the long upper corridor of the ancient building, and were standing at the closed entrance to the king’s chamber. A round autumn moon was riding through the heavens, and its bright light poured through the near window of the corridor.

Tamworth unlocked the door and threw it open. The brass lamp under the dragon’s head shed its radiance into every corner of the inviting room. The three strangers gazed in amazement at the unexpected display of richness and splendor. Tamworth threw his open hands forcibly against his head and shut his eyes with their palms, to hide a vision that filled him with direct apprehension of evil. Peele, Shakespere and Marlowe were seated under the great lamp and about the massive center table!

The disturbed occupants of the apartment had arisen at sight of the strangers, and gazed in astonishment at Tamworth, who now entered in advance of the others. He said calmly, but distinctly enough for every one to hear: “These men have forced themselves upon me and into this room for the purpose of learning if the man is here who entered the church of St. Olave on the night of its destruction.”

“And there he is,” exclaimed Eliot, pointing at Marlowe.

Several voices gave utterance to conflicting statements, so that it was impossible to distinguish their substance or force; and then Marlowe asked: “And what is wanted of me, if I am the man?”

Tamworth turned about, and, reaching the door, slammed it shut. Eliot regarded this movement with suspicion, and noticing it, Tamworth said: “This disturbance should be confined to closed walls.”

“There is to be none,” responded Eliot.

“And so I pray,” answered Tamworth; “for is not the purpose of thy entrance accomplished?”

“Not fully,” answered Eliot, and then addressing Marlowe: “I must have thy written and sworn statement of the events of the night you stood with Bame in the chantry of the church.”

“For what purpose?” demanded Marlowe.

“To save an innocent man from the gallows.”

“Of whom dost thou speak?”

“Of Bame,” answered Eliot.

“Never!” came the response of several voices.

“Nay, nay!” exclaimed Marlowe, “if one unjustly accused may be saved by such simple means, I will give it. Is this all?”

“For the present,” answered Eliot. “Thy affidavit is sufficient for my immediate purpose; but later thou must appear as a witness upon a new trial of Bame, if the same shall be granted.”

“And for what has he been tried?” asked Marlowe.

“For the burglary of the church.”

“A false accusation,” exclaimed Marlowe.

“Good!” responded Eliot.

“And who here has authority to take the oath which must be affixed to the statement of thy proposed witness?” inquired Tamworth.

“That is a matter easily attended to,” answered Eliot. “A justice is not far distant. We can attend before him; or if you prefer, send one of your friends for him. Here is the statement.”

Throwing back his heavy cloak with these words, the barrister drew from his pocket a white roll. He then thrust his gloves under his belt, and spread out the paper upon the table.

“Have you a quill and ink here?” he asked.

“I have,” answered Tamworth, “but what is the character of this written statement?”

“See for thyself; and you,” he continued, directing his eyes upon Peele, “can you not go to the justice at the corner of this street and the Poultry, and bring him here, or if he refuses to stir abroad at this late hour, demand that he light his candle and wait our presence?”

“You are in haste,” remarked Tamworth, “and not at all diffident in making requests of strangers.”

“There is occasion for it.”

“We certainly prefer the justice to attend here,” said Peele, “but why not send one of these watchmen?”

“They may not be as persuasive as a man of dignified bearing,” returned Eliot, bowing slightly.

“Well, Peele,” said Tamworth, “a word with you.”

He drew him and Shakespere into the distant alcove.

“Is the situation serious?” asked Peele.

“Not so far as immediate results are concerned, unless the justice knows and recognizes Marlowe. It is evident that Eliot never saw him before, but thinks he fills Bame’s description of the man who was with him in St. Olave. All that he can demand now is an affidavit. They have no power to take him into custody.”

“Unless by unlawful force,” suggested Peele.

“True,” answered Tamworth, “but the danger lies in the future. The order, upon Eliot’s motion for a new trial, may be made to-morrow, and Marlowe would be detained as a witness. Further concealment here, except for the night, is hopeless. There is no safety for him in London. He must leave for the continent before twenty-four hours have passed over his head.”

“And now, what?” asked Peele.

“There is no occasion for either of you remaining here, and you must leave as though in answer to Eliot’s request to call the justice, whom we do not want here. His presence might be fatal. If you do not depart on this pretense, a watchman may be sent. In the tedious delay which will ensue, I shall find time to outwit this presumptuous barrister and his watchmen. Repair to Shakespere’s quarters and there await our coming.”

The three came forth from behind the portieres.

“Well,” remarked Eliot, quietly, “what is the result of this uncalled-for conference?”

His manner of looking at Tamworth, more than his words, showed that their withdrawal had raised his suspicions.

“Peele will go for the justice,” said Tamworth.

“And I with him,” continued Shakespere.

“So,” said Eliot, “I have no desire to break up this family meeting; but if you will have it that way, it is well.”

“Midnight is not an early hour for departure,” said one of the group.

The two men had departed when Tamworth began reading aloud for his own and Marlowe’s benefit the paper unrolled upon the table. At the head was the customary title of court and cause with venue following. Then came the pronoun “I,” with a blank space for the insertion of a name. It was evident that Eliot had not placed any faith in Bame’s statement that this man was Christopher Marlowe. Cases of mistaken identity were not of infrequent occurrence, and this was evidently one; but whatever his name might be, he was none the less the witness upon whom Bame’s cause depended. Such had been the reasoning of the barrister while drawing the paper. Tamworth finished his reading. It was the true recital of the night’s events, but Tamworth shook his head impressively and then asked:

“Upon this you hope for a re-trial?”

“Most assuredly,” answered Eliot.

“And upon such trial, expect my noble friend to appear?”

“How else could it be accomplished?” answered the other, in amazement, and then, as though a seed of fear had grown into gigantic form within him, he straightened himself up and said, sententiously: “And I demand thy assurance of his presence when required--thy assurance as a lawyer--or he must be taken into custody.”

“Thy closing threat is a mockery of law,” said Tamworth quietly. “With neither the warrant for his seizure, nor the justifiable ground of a crime committed in the presence of an officer, we may laugh at thy proposed action.”

“Laugh or not,” said Eliot, in measured tones, “we will await the coming of the justice.” And then, looking at Marlowe, he suddenly asked: “And now what is thy name?”

“We will wait for the justice, as you suggest,” interrupted Tamworth, apparently not noticing the question. Then he nodded to Marlowe, who was showing signs of agitation, and the two moved to the wall beyond which lay the secret oratory.

“We must strike at once,” whispered Tamworth.

“Aye,” murmured Marlowe, “but how?”

“The oratory is thine only refuge for the present. Later I will tell my plans.”

“The ink!” demanded Eliot, in loud voice, and then almost inaudibly he spoke to one of the watchmen: “Guard the stairs. Stand there near the railing.”

Tamworth whispered once more in the ear of his friend: “Remain here ready to act.”

At the same time he pointed to the spot where, behind the tapestry, the entrance to the oratory was concealed. Marlowe nodded his head, and then Tamworth crossed the room to a desk in the alcove. He returned with an inkhorn. His plan of action had been clearly conceived and he was about to attempt its execution. He and his companion could have adopted violent means, for with their swords they were more than a match for Eliot and the watchmen; but in the train of such violence, complete and irretrievable disaster might follow. Such attack was not to be made unless all other efforts failed.

As Tamworth handed the inkhorn to Eliot, he stepped upon a chair beside him and then on the table. The movement was so sudden that none understood his purpose, until he had raised the lamp bodily from its suspended basket. He was about to extinguish its flame but before it could be accomplished, Eliot, who was still sitting beside the table, grabbed with both arms the legs which stood before him. The attempt to extinguish the flame failed; Tamworth, with a cry, lost his balance, and as he fell he threw his blazing burden toward the empty fire-place. A wave of black smoke followed its course across the room and then--darkness. Not a spark of light shone anywhere. Marlowe would fain have waited to learn the culmination of the train of action thus set in motion, but he knew that every move had been for his benefit; and so, as darkness enveloped him, he drew back the tapestry and pressed upon a mullion of the walled window. It was not the one he wanted. He felt again and ran his hands across the entire surface. Ah! he had it, and the wall moved; but at that instant, which was but the second instant in the flight of time since darkness had descended, a sword of light flashed upward from the chimney-place, and instantaneously a violent explosion shook the room. Flaming oil shot outward from the chimney for a distance of twenty feet. It ran like snakes with flashing and darting tongues along every exposed seam of the ancient floor. It curled around the splendid supports of the mantel. It fastened its destroying fangs in the scattered pieces of oriental carpet, and crawled over and fed upon the unconscious form of the man who had met his death in his efforts to save his friend. There he lay where he had fallen with face upward on the hearth-stone. How the black smoke was rising from the burning oil! Everything inanimate and unconscious within the king’s chamber, nay, within the ancient palace, was doomed.

Eliot and the watchman fled through the open door and the smoke followed them, as though thus seeing an exit for its increasing volume. Marlowe, still holding to the folds of the tapestry, which he had grasped as the explosion swayed his body, cried loudly, “Tamworth, Tamworth!”

There was no answer. He staggered from his place, reached the center table, circled it, and the flames leaped at his feet and drove him backward. His heel struck the raised marble of the first of the descended steps of the stairway, and the heat filled his nostrils. He turned and, hiding his face in his hands, groped his way down the secret stairway, threw open its narrow door and passed into the darkness.

On that night a despondent and sorrowful man demanded by loud blows admittance to a room at the Boar’s Head which overlooked Crooked Lane and the churchyard of St. Michael. But the regular occupant, who was none less than George Peele, was not then within to hear the summons. Late, on the following morning, soon after Peele had reached his room, another knock, this time by a stranger, sounded. Immediately the door was opened, and a man, whose apparel and hands bespoke contact with wherries and fish, handed in a sealed letter. Peele broke it open and read the following:

“My Dear Peele: Tamworth’s and my apartments were destroyed by fire last night, and he, while striving for my safety, perished in the flames. Of this I shall write you more fully when time is afforded me, and travel has somewhat dispelled the present oppressive gloom. I sought entrance at thy door last night to announce my intention of departing, but no one answered my knocking. I can no longer risk the safety of my few remaining friends, and, knowing of no refuge under a government whose hand would be raised against me if my existence were known, I leave for Venice to-night. I shall continue writing, but, as of late, it must be under the name of Shakespere. Vale. Faustus.”

The reading finished, he asked of the man who still stood at the door: “Where is the person who sent this?”

“On the Thames; aboard ship bound seaward.”

“When did you leave him?”

“Not long since, for I rowed directly up the river after putting him aboard that ship in midstream. When ashore I came directly here.”

“That is all,” said Peele, and as the door was closed by the departing wherry man, he continued in audible voice, but solely for his own ear: “Poor Tamworth! and how much better off are the living? Poor Marlowe! but still this change is for thy best interests. Thy Jew of Malta is strong, but the crudeness of detail arises from unfamiliarity with the scenes where it is laid. The fire burning within thee, O noble friend and fellow dramatist, must blaze clearer and brighter from new fuel now to be furnished thee. Barabbas is great, but a greater Jew will arise from out thy meditations in the City of the Sea. This is the language of prophecy.”

THE RIDE TO TYBURN.

--“_And where didst meet him?_ _Upon mine own freehold within forty feet of the gallows, conning his neck verse._”

--_Jew of Malta._

--“_Who doth (Time) gallop withal?_ _With a thief to the gallows; for though he goeth as softly as foot can fall, he thinks himself too soon there._”

--_As You Like It._

At the house of the sheriff in Deptford, Anne waited many long days for Bame to appear with her father. No news of Bame’s arrest reached her ears, and no answer came to her message to Marlowe. At length an opportunity arose to send another messenger to Canterbury, this time by no circuitous route; but, despite its delivery, Manuel Crossford did not appear to secure her liberation. The wished-for reconciliation between father and daughter did not take place until many months later; but before the month of June had passed, the aid which Anne had sought from those nearest to her through blood and family ties, came in the person of a maid in the house of the sheriff. This maid had been deputized to attend upon the fair prisoner. As might have been expected she was easily won over, and on a dark night an escape was effected through unbolted doors, and a boat which lay ready on the Thames. The maid had enlisted the services of a lad who would have crossed the sea at her bidding, and by him they were conveyed up the river to London, where, in a quarter at some distance from her former home with her aunt, and in ignorance of what was transpiring with Bame and Marlowe, we must leave her and return to those characters who had become involved in a web from which there was no possible extrication.

The boy Pence had been set at liberty. His companions, Pento and Badly, had suffered capital punishment. Bame would have immediately met the same fate, but an extra effort was made in his behalf.

Eliot’s attempts to learn something of Tamworth, and of his companion whose name was still unknown, proved fruitless. With their disappearance, all hope of a new trial for Bame was extinguished. But a writ of error was taken, and the case, after swinging back and forth between the courts, was finally determined adversely to the appellant. Bame was resentenced, and the day fixed was December 6th, 1594. It had at length dawned in the streets of London.

Bame saw the morning only through bars never gilded by sunlight, and this was the last daybreak he would ever witness. It had not aroused him from sleep, for he had walked the cell for eighteen hours without an intermission of rest, except as he had paused for a bite at the bread or for a swallow of water handed in by the turnkey. No death watch had been in the corridor; for prisoners awaiting execution in those days were too numerous to command any particular attention. Thus his meditations had been undisturbed, except by the hourly passing by the guard, whose footsteps only diverted his thoughts of the approaching last hour, to the momentary apprehension that it was at hand. At such times he would pause in his walk; glance at the window to see if the night had passed, and failing to recognize any difference between the gloom within and the gloom without the bars, would brush the sudden beads of perspiration from his brow and await the dying away of the disturbing footsteps.

Amid all the thoughts of the coming ordeal, there was one consolation that remained. It was in the mode of his prescribed death. The victims, of whose untimely fates he had been the prime spring, had met death in bitter agony at the stake; he was to be hung. While he had not gloated over the tortures of the condemned free-thinkers, he had deemed these tortures merited, and, as a late witness of the agonies of martyrs, he had at times fairly smiled at his own sentence.

There was one man amid the dense crowd, thronging the front of Newgate on that morning, who waited with something more than vulgar curiosity to see the condemned felon come forth. At an early hour, this man had mounted the stone block which stood on the edge of the street directly before the gates of the prison; and neither the threats of the approaching storm, nor its furious presence had driven him under shelter. Under the livid colored clouds, which still obscured the sky after the passing of the tempest, he maintained his position of vantage. It gave him a commanding view on all sides, and likewise made him a conspicuous figure. The tumbril bearing Bame would pass close before him. He could not fail in his accost of the condemned to secure his attention, and for this purpose he held this position. What was his ultimate design could not be read in the expression of his face or his demeanor. It might be that he intended by the fervor of devout utterance to strengthen the tried soul of the man entering the valley of shadow, or, on the contrary, to exhibit to the latter a gloating visage and hurl an execration in his face.

Whoever in the idle crowd questioned the design of this heavy man in leathern doublet who stood above them, remained only a short time in ignorance. The heavy gates swung open, and three men flourishing halberds cleared the way for a horse and open cart. Behind the cart came four armed riders, and the hangman in rough cassock and black hat. The cart bore two men. One was the driver. The other was a man in manacles who stood erect for the moment while the wheels run over the smooth pavement. As evidence of innocence, he wore a white cockade in his hat, and an expression of forced resignation appeared on his face. The crowd was silent for a moment, and then cheered him as they noticed his erect posture and the white cockade.

The horse had been reined in at the edge of the street for a moment while the crowd was being thrust back by the guard. Bame silenced the cheering by his effort to be heard above this demonstration. He repeated his words twice, and then they heard him.

“I have committed no crime,” he cried, “My death will be a judicial murder.”

Contrary to his expectations, the words did not revive the applause that had preceded them. This was occasioned by another voice that rang out in clear and louder accents:

“The dog lies. He should be strangled before he reaches the gallows. A public accuser! a public informer!”

Bame turned his head, and on his elevated perch he saw Gyves, the ex-constable. The crowd saw him too, and in its fickleness cheered him and then hooted and threw mud and stones at Bame. The latter was knocked into a sitting posture by the missiles where he remained trembling from fear of a more violent assault being made. Up to that moment he had prayed for death in any form, except at the hands of the hangman; but in the sudden and unexpected presence of mob violence, fierce and strong enough to crush out all life, he forgot the incentive of his prayers.

The driver’s hat had been knocked from his head, and this angered him so that he swore loudly and called vile names even at the man who picked the fallen hat from the ground and threw it into the cart. At the same time he sent the long lash of his whip cracking and smarting into the faces of the front row of the crowd. They fell back, jeering at him.

“Kill him, too!” they yelled.

“A fit mate for the felon!”

“He handles his reins like Tyburn hemp!”

“An apprentice for the hangman!”

“Take that!”

“And that!”

Another volley of stones and mud followed. Bame lay flat in the cart and escaped injury, but the driver fell back stunned, with the reins in his nerveless hands. Then there was a discharge of firearms. The guards had leveled their blunderbusses and puffs of smoke curled upwards from the wide mouths. The mob turned and broke away precipitately on all sides, leaving two who had fallen with the report of the firearms, and now lay outstretched on the stone pavement. One of them was Gyves. His late prominence and appearance as the leading spirit of the mob had made him the mark for more than one of the guards, and his body was riddled with balls. Thus was the beginning of the ride marked with death, and the end was to be no less a tragedy.

While London was under the rule of the Plantagenets, the penalty pronounced against capital offenders was inflicted amid the elms in Smithfield; but under the piteous eyes of children from the windows of the encroaching dwellings of a rapidly increasing populace, the executioner bungled so badly in his frequent task, that early in the reign of the Tudors, the distant bank of the Tyburn was selected as a more suitable spot for carrying the death sentence into effect. Here, for a few years following, the surrounding fields remained open, and none but the constant mob from Faringdon ward looked upon the unsightly object under the “Tyburn tree.” This mob followed the cart of the condemned in all seasons and under all skies. On dry roads it was enveloped in dust; the mud was beaten down by its untiring feet in stormy seasons, and while it was compact in body upon leaving Newgate it was a scattered procession in its retreat from Tyburn.

The Tyburn road started amid thick clustering buildings, but soon shaking itself free from these, it ran on, wide and firm, by bordering dwellings, tippling houses and inns, into the open country, where it straggled and seemed aimless in its purpose. But this seeming was only to quiet the thousands of wretches who were carried over its surface on their last ride. For them there were three miles of hard travel, and at the end of each intermediate mile, hope could kindle in their breasts that the ride might be only the beginning of a journey into exile. In summer they saw broad fields of grain; felt the cool shade of forests; heard the songs of birds; or, in the dead season of the year, reaped from the vision of white hills a temporary respite from brooding melancholy.