Part 3

Three hours the feast had lasted: and the apprentice had listened to many songs, many speeches, but scarcely to the promised talk of gods. The poets, maybe, reserved such talk for the Mermaid. Here they were outnumbered by the players and by such ladies as the Bankside (which provided everything) furnished to grace the entertainment; and doubtless they subdued their discourse to the company. The Burbages, Dick and Cuthbert, John Heminge, Will Kempe--some half-a-dozen of the crew perhaps--might love good literature: but even these were pardonably more elate over the epilogue than over the play. For months they, the Lord Chamberlain's servants, had felt the eyes of London upon them: to-night they had triumphed, and to-morrow London would ring with appreciative laughter. It is not every day that your child of pleasure outwits your man of business at his own game: it is not once in a generation that he scores such a hit as had been scored to-day. The ladies, indeed, yawned without dissembling, while Master Jonson--an ungainly youth with a pimply face, a rasping accent, and a hard pedantic manner--proposed success to the new comedy and long life to its author; which he did at interminable length; spicing his discourse with quotations from Aristotle, Longinus, Quintilian, the _Ars Poetica_, Persius, and Seneca, authors less studied than the Aretine along Bankside. He loved Will Shakespeare.... A comedy of his own (as the company might remember) owed not a little to his friend Will Shakespeare's acting.... Here was a case in which love and esteem--yes, and worship--might hardly be dissociated.... In short, speaking as modestly as a young man might of his senior, Will Shakespeare was the age's ornament and, but for lack of an early gruelling in the classics, might easily have been an ornament for any age. Cuthbert Burbage--it is always your quiet man who first succumbs on these occasions--slid beneath the table with a vacuous laugh and lay in slumber. Dick Burbage sat and drummed his toes impatiently. Nashe puffed at a pipe of tobacco. Kempe, his elbows on the board, his chin resting on his palms, watched the orator with amused interest, mischief lurking in every crease of his wrinkled face. Will Shakespeare leaned back in his chair and scanned the rafters, smiling gently the while. His speech, when his turn came to respond, was brief, almost curt. He would pass by (he said) his young friend's learned encomiums, and come to that which lay nearer to their thoughts than either the new play or the new play's author. Let them fill and drink in silence to the demise of an old friend, the vanished theatre, the first ever built in London. Then, happening to glance at Heminge as he poured out the wine--"Tut, Jack!" he spoke up sharply: "keep that easy rheum for the boards. Brush thine eyes, lad: we be all players here--or women--and know the trade."

It hurt. If Heminge's eyes had begun to water sentimentally, they flinched now with real pain. This man loved Shakespeare with a dog's love. He blinked, and a drop fell and rested on the back of his hand as it fingered the base of his wine-glass. The apprentice saw and noted it.

"And another glass, lads, to the Phoenix that shall arise! A toast, and this time not in silence!" shouted John Shakespeare, springing up, flask in one hand and glass in the other. Meat or wine, jest or sally of man or woman, dull speech or brisk--all came alike to him. His doublet was unbuttoned; he had smoked three pipes, drunk a quart of sack, and never once yawned. He was enjoying himself to the top of his bent. "Music, I say! Music!" A thought seemed to strike him; his eyes filled with happy inspiration. Still gripping his flask, he rolled to the door, flung it open, and bawled down the stairway--

"Ahoy! Below, there!"

"Ahoy, then, with all my heart!" answered a voice, gay and youthful, pat on the summons. "What is't ye lack, my master?"

"Music, an thou canst give it. If not----"

"My singing voice broke these four years past, I fear me."

"Your name, then, at least, young man, or ever you thrust yourself upon private company."

"William Herbert, at your service." A handsome lad--a boy, almost--stood in the doorway, having slipped past John Shakespeare's guard: a laughing, frank-faced boy, in a cloak slashed with orange-tawny satin. So much the apprentice noted before he heard a second voice, as jaunty and even more youthfully shrill, raised in protest upon the stairhead outside.

"And where the master goes," it demanded, "may not his page follow?"

John Shakespeare seemingly gave way to this second challenge as to the first. "Be these friends of thine, Will?" he called past them as a second youth appeared in the doorway, a pretty, dark-complexioned lad, cloaked in white, who stood a pace behind his companion's elbow and gazed into the supper-room with eyes at once mischievous and timid.

"Good-evening, gentles!" The taller lad comprehended the feasters and the disordered table in a roguish bow. "Good-evening, Will!" He singled out Shakespeare, and nodded.

"My Lord Herbert!"

The apprentice's eye, cast towards Shakespeare at the salutation given, marked a dark flush rise to the great man's temples as he answered the nod.

"I called thee 'Will,'" answered Herbert lightly.

"You called us 'gentles,'" Shakespeare replied, the dark flush yet lingering on either cheek. "A word signifying bait for gudgeons, bred in carrion."

"Yet I called thee Will," insisted Herbert more gently. "'Tis my name as well as thine, and we have lovingly exchanged it before now, or my memory cheats me."

"'Tis a name lightly exchanged in love." With a glance at the white-cloaked page Shakespeare turned on his heel.

"La, Will, where be thy manners?" cried one of the women. "Welcome, my young Lord; and welcome the boy beside thee for his pretty face! Step in, child, that I may pass thee round to be kissed."

The page laughed and stepped forward with his chin defiantly tilted. His eyes examined the women curiously and yet with a touch of fear.

"Nay, never flinch, lad! I'll do thee no harm," chuckled the one who had invited him. "Mass o' me, how I love modesty in these days of scandal!"

"Music? Who called for music?" a foreign voice demanded: and now in the doorway appeared three newcomers, two men and a woman--the same three of whom the apprentice had caught a glimpse within the room at the stairs' foot. The spokesman, a heavily built fellow with a short bull-neck and small cunning eyes, carried a drum slung about his shoulders and beat a rub-a-dub on it by way of flourish. "Take thy tambourine and dance, Julitta--

_Julie, prends ton tambourin; Toi, prends ta flute, Robin_,"

he hummed, tapping his drum again.

"So? So? What foreign gabble is this?" demanded John Shakespeare, following and laying a hand on his shoulder.

"A pretty little carol for Christmas, Signore, that we picked up on our way through Burgundy, where they sing it to a jargon I cannot emulate. But the tune is as it likes you--

_Au son ces instruments-- Turelurelu, patapatapan-- Nous dirons Noël gaîment!_

Goes it not trippingly, Signore? You will say so when you see my Julitta dance to it."

"Eh--eh? Dance to a carol?" a woman protested. "'Tis inviting the earth to open and swallow us."

"Why, where's the harm on't?" John Shakespeare demanded. "A pretty little concomitant, and anciently proper to all religions, nor among the heathen only, but in England and all parts of Christendom--

_In manger wrapped it was-- So poorly happ'd my chance-- Between an ox and a silly poor ass To call my true love to the dance! Sing O, my love, my love, my love...._

There's precedent for ye, Ma'am--good English precedent. Zooks! I'm a devout man, I hope; but I bear a liberal mind and condemn no form of mirth, so it be honest. The earth swallow us? Ay, soon or late it will, not being squeamish. Meantime, dance, I say! Clear back the tables there, and let the girl show her paces!"

Young Herbert glanced at Burbage with lifted eyebrow, as if to demand, "Who is this madman?" Burbage laughed, throwing out both hands.

"But he is gigantic!" lisped the page, as with a wave of his two great arms John Shakespeare seemed to catch up the company and fling them to work pell-mell, thrusting back tables, piling chairs, clearing the floor of its rushes. "He is a whirlwind of a man!"

"Come, Julitta!" called the man with the drum. "Francisco, take thy pipe, man!--

_Au son de ces instruments-- Turelurelu, patapatapan_--"

As the music struck up, the girl, still with her scornful, impassive face, leapt like a panther from the doorway into the space cleared for her, and whirled down the room in a dance the like of which our apprentice had never seen nor dreamed of. And yet his gaze at first was not for her, but for the younger foreigner, the one with the pipe. For if ever horror took visible form, it stood and stared from the windows of that man's eyes. They were handsome eyes, too, large and dark and passionate: but just now they stared blindly as though a hot iron had seared them. Twice they had turned to the girl, who answered by not so much as a glance; and twice with a shudder upon the man with the drum, who caught the look and blinked wickedly. Worst of all was it when the music began, to see that horror fixed and staring over a pair of cheeks ludicrously puffing at a flageolet. A face for a gargoyle! The apprentice shivered, and glanced from one to other of the company: but they, one and all, were watching the dancer.

It was a marvellous dance, truly. The girl, her tambourine lifted high, and clashing softly to the beat of the music, whirled down the length of the room, while above the pipe's falsetto and rumble of the drum the burly man lifted his voice and trolled--

"_Turelurelu, patapatapan-- Au son de ces instruments Faisons la nique à Satan!_"

By the barricade of chairs and tables, under which lay Cuthbert Burbage in peaceful stupor, she checked her onward rush, whirling yet, but so lazily that she seemed for the moment to stand poised, her scarf outspread like the wings of a butterfly: and so, slowly, very slowly, she came floating back. Twice she repeated this, each time narrowing her circuit, until she reached the middle of the floor, and there began to spin on her toes as a top spins when (as children say) it goes to sleep. The tambourine no longer clashed. Balanced high on the point of her uplifted forefinger, it too began to spin, and span until its outline became a blur. Still, as the music rose shriller and wilder, she revolved more and more rapidly, yet apparently with less and less of effort. Her scarf had become a mere filmy disc rotating around a whorl of gleaming flesh and glancing jewels.

A roar of delight from John Shakespeare broke the spell. The company echoed it with round upon round of hand-clapping. The music ceased suddenly, and the dancer, dipping low until her knees brushed the floor, stood erect again, dropped her arms, and turned carelessly to the nearest table.

"Bravo! bravissimo!" thundered John Shakespeare. "A cup of wine for her, there!"

The girl had snatched up a crust of bread and was gnawing it ravenously. He thrust his way through the guests and poured out wine for her. She took the glass with a steady hand, scarcely pausing in her meal to thank him.

"But who is your master of ceremonies?" demanded the page's piping voice.

William Shakespeare heard it and turned. "He is my father," said he quietly.

But John Shakespeare had heard also. Wheeling about, wine-flask in hand, he faced the lad with a large and mock-elaborate bow. "That, young Sir, must be my chief title to your notice. For the rest, I am a plain gentleman of Warwickshire, of impaired but (I thank God) bettering fortune; my name John Shakespeare; my coat, or, a bend sable, charged with a lance proper. One of these fine days I may bring it to Court for you to recognise: but, alas! says Skelton--

_Age is a page For the Court full unmeet, For age cannot rage Nor buss her sweet sweet._

I shall bide at home and kiss the Queen's hand, through my son, more like."

"Indeed," said the page, "I hear reports that her Majesty hath already a mind to send for him."

"Is that so, Will?" His father beamed, delighted.

"In some sort it is," answered Herbert, "and in some sort I am her messenger's forerunner. She will have a play of thee, Will."

"The Queen?" Shakespeare turned on him sharply. "This is a fool's trick you play on me, my Lord." Yet his face flushed in spite of himself.

"I tell thee, straight brow and true man, I heard the words fall from her very lips. 'He shall write us a play,' she said; 'and this Falstaff shall be the hero on't, with no foolish royalties to overlay and clog his mirth.'"

"And, you see," put in the page maliciously, "we have come express to the Boar's Head to seek him out."

"That," Herbert added, "is our suit to-night."

"Will, lad, thy fortune's made!" John Shakespeare clapped a hand on his son's shoulder. "I shall see thee Sir William yet afore I die!"

If amid the general laughter two lines of vexation wrote themselves for a moment on Shakespeare's brow they died out swiftly. He stood back a pace, eyed his father awhile with grave and tender humour, and answered the pair of courtiers with a bow.

"Her Majesty's gracious notion of a play," said he, "must needs be her poor subject's pattern. If then I come to Court in motley, you, Sirs, at least will be indulgent, knowing how much a suit may disguise." The page, meeting his eye, laughed uneasily. "'Tis but a frolic----" he began.

"Ay, there's the pity o't," interrupted a deep voice--Kempe's.

The page laughed again, yet more nervously. "I should have said the Queen--God bless her!--desires but a frolic. And I had thought"--here he lifted his chin saucily and looked Kempe in the face--"that on Bankside they took a frolic less seriously."

"Why, no," answered Kempe: "they have to take it seriously, and the cost too,--that being their business."

"'Tis but a frolic, at any rate, that her Majesty proposes, with a trifling pageant or dance to conclude, in which certain of the Court may join."

A harsh laugh capped this explanation. It came from the dancing-girl, who, seated at the disordered table, had been eating like a hungry beast. She laid down her knife, rested her chin on her clasped hands, and, munching slowly, stared at the page from under her sullen, scornful brows.

"Wouldst learn to dance, child?" she demanded.

"With thee for teacher," the page answered modestly. "I have no skill, but a light foot only."

"A light foot!" the woman mimicked and broke into a laugh horrible to hear. "Wouldst achieve such art as mine with a light foot? I tell thee that to dance as I dance thy feet must go deep as hell!" She pushed back her plate, and, rising, nodded to the musicians. "Play, you!" she commanded.

This time she used no wild whirl down the room to give her impetus. She stood in the cleared space of floor, her arms hanging limp, and at the first shrill note of the pipe began to revolve on the points of her toes, her eyes, each time as they came full circle, meeting the gaze of the page, and slowly fascinating, freezing it. As slowly, deliberately, her hand went up, curved itself to the armpit of her bodice; and lo! as she straightened it aloft, a snake writhed itself around her upper arm, lifting its head to reach the shining bracelets, the jewelled fingers. A curving lift of the left arm, and on that too a snake began to coil and climb. Effortless, rigid as a revolving statue, she brought her finger-tips together overhead and dipped them to her bosom.

A shriek rang out, piercing high above the music.

"Catch her! She faints!" shouted Kempe, darting forward. But it was Shakespeare who caught the page's limp body as it dropped back on his arm. Bearing it to the window, he tore aside the curtain and thrust open a lattice to the dawn. The unconscious head drooped against his shoulder.

"My Lord"--he turned on Herbert as though the touch maddened him--"you are a young fool! God forgive me that I ever took you for better! Go, call a boat and take her out of this."

"Nay, but she revives," stammered Herbert, as the page's lips parted in a long, shuddering sigh.

"Go, fetch a boat, I say!--and make way there, all you by the door!"

VI

"Tut! tut!--the wench will come to fast enough in the fresh air. A dare-devil jade, too, to be sparking it on Bankside at this hour! But it takes more than a woman, they say, to kill a mouse, and with serpents her sex hath an ancient feud. What's her name, I wonder?"

The candles, burning low and guttering in the draught of the open window, showed a banquet-hall deserted, or all but deserted. A small crowd of the guests--our apprentice among them--had trooped downstairs after Shakespeare and his burden. Others, reminded by the grey dawn, had slipped away on their own account to hire a passage home from the sleepy watermen before Paris Garden Stairs.

"Can any one tell me her name, now?" repeated John Shakespeare, rolling to the table and pouring himself yet another glass of wine. But no one answered him. The snake-woman had folded back her pets within her bodice and resumed her meal as though nothing had happened. The burly drummer had chosen a chair beside her and fallen to on the remains of a pasty. Both were eating voraciously. Francisco, the pipe-player, sat sidesaddle-wise on a form at a little distance and drank and watched them, still with the horror in his eyes. One or two women lingered, and searched the tables, pocketing crusts--searched with faces such as on battlefields, at dawn, go peering among the dead and wounded.

"But hullo!" John Shakespeare swung round, glass in hand, as the apprentice stood panting in the doorway. "Faith, you return before I had well missed you."

The lad's eyes twinkled with mischief.

"An thou hasten not, master, I fear me thou may'st miss higher game; with our hosts--your son amongst 'em--even now departing by boat and, for aught I know, leaving thee to pay the shot."

"Michael and all his angels preserve us! I had forgot----"

John Shakespeare clapped a hand on his empty pocket, and ran for the stairhead. "Will!" he bawled. "Will! My son Will!"

The apprentice laughed and stepped toward the window, tittuping slightly; for (to tell the truth) he had drunk more wine than agreed with him. Standing by the window, he laughed again vacuously, drew a long breath, and so spun round on his heels at the sound of a choking cry and a rush of feet. With that he saw, as in a haze--his head being yet dizzy--the heavy man catch up his drum by its strap and, using it as a shield, with a backward sweep of the arm hurl off the youth Francisco, who had leapt on him knife in hand. Clutching the curtain, he heard the knife rip through the drum's parchment and saw the young man's face of hate as the swift parry flung him back staggering, upsetting a form, against the table's edge. He saw the glasses there leap and totter from the shock, heard their rims jar and ring together like a peal of bells.

The sound seemed to clear his brain. He could not guess what had provoked the brawl; but in one and the same instant he saw the drummer reach back an arm as if to draw the dancing woman on his knee; heard his jeering laugh as he slipped a hand down past her bare shoulder; saw her unmoved face, sullenly watching; saw Francisco, still clutching his knife, gather himself up for another spring. As he sprang the drummer's hand slid round from behind the woman's back, and it too grasped a knife. An overturned chair lay between the two, and the rail of it as Francisco leapt caught his foot, so that with a clutch he fell sideways against the table. Again the glasses jarred and rang, and yet again and more loudly as the drummer's hand went up and drove the dagger through the neck, pinning it to the board. The youth's legs contracted in a horrible kick, contracted again and fell limp. There was a gush of blood across the cloth, a sound of breath escaping and choked in its escape: and as the killer wrenched out his knife for a second stroke, the body slid with a thud to the floor.

The apprentice had feasted, and feasted well; yet throughout the feast (he bethought himself of this later), no serving-man and but one serving-maid had entered the room. Wines and dishes had come at call to a hatch in the wall at the far end of the room. One serving-maid had done all the rest, moving behind the guests' chairs with a face and mien which reminded him of a tall angel he had seen once borne in a car of triumph at a City show. But now as he left his curtain, twittering, crazed with fear, spreading out both hands toward the stain on the tablecloth, a door beside the hatch opened noiselessly, and swift and prompt as though they had been watching, two men entered, flung a dark coverlet over the body, lifted and bore it off, closing the door behind them. They went as they had come, swiftly, without a word. He had seen it as plainly as he saw now the murderer sheathing his knife, the woman sullenly watching him. The other women, too, had vanished--they that had been gleaning among the broken crusts. Had they decamped, scurrying, at the first hint of the brawl? He could not tell: they had been, and were not.

He stretched out both hands towards the man, the woman--would they, too, vanish?--and the damning stain? A cry worked in his throat, but would not come.

"Gone!" a voice called, hearty at once and disconsolate, from the doorway behind him. "Gone--given me the slip, as I am a Christian sinner. What? You three left alone here? But where is our friend the piper?"

The apprentice made a snatch at a flask of wine, and, turning, let its contents spill wildly over the bloodied tablecloth.

"Art drunk, lad--shamefully drunk," said John Shakespeare, lurching forward. "They have given me the slip, I say, and ne'er a groat have I to redeem my promises."

"They paid the score below--I saw them; and this thy son charged me to hand to thee." The apprentice drew a full purse from his pocket and flung it on the table. "I--I played thee a trick, master: but let me forth into fresh air. This room dizzies me...."

"Go thy ways--go thy ways, child. For my part I was ever last at a feast to leave it, and would crack one more cup with these good folk. To your health, Madam!" He reached a hand for the wine-flask as the apprentice set it down and went forth, tottering yet.

VII

Dawn was breaking down the river; a grey dawn as yet, albeit above the mists rolling low upon the tideway a clear sky promised gold to come--a golden Christmas Day. The mist, however, had a chill which searched the bones. The red-eyed waterman pulled as though his arms were numb. Tom Nashe coughed and huddled his cloak about him, as he turned for a last backward glance on Bankside, where a few lights yet gleamed, and the notes of a belated guitar tinkled on, dulled by the vapours, calling like a thin ghost above the deeper baying of the hounds.

"Take care of thyself, lad," said Shakespeare kindly, stretching out a hand to help his friend draw the cloak closer.

"Behoved me think of that sooner, I doubt," Nashe answered, glancing up with a wry, pathetic smile, yet gratefully. He dropped his eyes to the cloak and quoted--

"_Sometime it was of cloth-in-grain, 'Tis now but a sigh-clout, as you may see; It will hold out neither wind nor rain_--

and--and--I thank thee, Will----

_But I'll take my old cloak about me._

There's salt in the very warp of it, good Yarmouth salt. Will?"

"Ay, lad?"

"Is't true thou'rt become a landowner, down in thy native shire?"

"In a small way, Tom."

"A man of estate? with coat-of-arms and all?"

"Even that too, with your leave."