A POINT OF CONFLUENCE.
If ever sun stained heaven with bloody clouds,
And made it look with terror on the world:
If ever day were turned to ugly night
And night made semblance of the hue of hell, etc.
—The Massacre at Paris, scene 2.
Oh! I have passed a miserable night,
So full of ugly sights, of ghastly dreams,
That as I am a Christian, faithful man,
I would not spend another such a night,
Though ’twere to buy a world of happy days.
—King Richard III, i, 4.
The human sea of London was at the period of its deepest calm. The noisy idle white-caps of the night had been laid at rest, and not yet had the strong billows of the trade current begun their steady roll. The sun might already have lifted his rim slightly above the Langdon Hills, but no evidence of his coming was as yet visible in the labyrinth of London streets. One might have turned one’s face upward in the drizzling rain and noticed the clouds with faint glow suffused, but whether it was moonlight filtering through broken ranks of driving vapor, or the gray of the dawn, could not for a time have been determined.
It was at this hour that two men were passing into that ancient street of the city known as the Old Jewry. Their heads were muffled in their cloaks or capes; their nearer arms locked as they walked abreast, and their steps were as swift as it was possible to take in the darkness. They stumbled along without a link light or a lanthorn to show the holes in the broken pavements, the turns of streets and other impediments and intricacies of the way. It was not only unusual but a matter to excite suspicion, for any person with even the weight of an untattered coat on his back to venture thus through the quarters from which these two men had come. Here and there, a lanthorn in the hands of a bellman of the night blinked and wavered; and directly before them, the flaring torch of a link-boy shot a shifting light along black, dripping shop fronts and displayed the figure, close following in its wake, of a solitary horseman.
No part of the city was deemed safe after the candles, burning in the horn receptacles before the dwellings and shops, were extinguished. The hour for such extinguishment was nine; and close following it, on moonless and foggy nights, bludgeon-bearing thieves issued from reeking alleys into the public streets, and assaulted belated passers. The bellman, with his formidable halberd, might rush where he heard the cry of the person assaulted, but long before he reached the spot his lanthorn had warned the assaulter, and naught but the bleeding victim, with rifled pockets, would meet his gaze.
But the solitary thief, or skulking pairs of rufflers, were not the only menace against night walks. Bodies, numbering sometimes a hundred men, having assembled in some obscure den, would sally forth at midnight and rob the houses of whomsoever were reported to have money or treasure. Murder at such times, either of defenseless citizens in night robes within their houses, or inoffensive unfortunates stumbling into the ranks of the lawless crews, was a crime of frequent occurrence.
The neighborhood of the junction of Poultry street and the street of the Old Jewry was a favorite rendezvous of these thieves; for the majority of the persons stirring late at night in that locality was of the class wearing jewels or carrying coin, and the situation was favorable for robbing without hazard. At the corner of the two streets one could command a vision for many blocks in several directions. The moving lights of the guardians of the night could thus be watched without fear of the unexpected approach of the latter. While one thief might be thus occupied, his fellows could halt, assault and rob the incautious passer. The lofty buildings rendered the shadows deep upon the pavements on all nights, and the wide portico of St. Olave, with its great columns, made an excellent ambush. Behind this church ran Cutthroat Lane—a narrow and never-lighted alley, into which one, with but a few feet of separation from a pursuing officer, could enter and vanish as though swallowed by the sea. It was a row of shackly tenements, facing one side of this alley, that thus gave friendly aid. Their doors were always ajar, even when winter storms prevailed; and stairs, ascending to intricate upper halls, and descending into connecting cellars, soon baffled all panting pursuers. Even the cautious police who, in daytime, attempted to thread the ways through which some desperado had eluded pursuit, were confused with blind passages and daunted by a darkness and silence that imported evil.
On this particular night, five thieves were hanging like trembling shadows about the portico of St. Olave. The night was almost spent and not one groat had they raised. All the passing groups of men had comprised too many members to warrant any attack and the one sole traveler, whom they had seized at the mouth of Cutthroat Lane proved to be a beggar. His unconscious body now lay face downward in the mud of that lane. The chance of his recovery from the blow of one of the disappointed robbers was a question for the doctors.
What business had beggars to be abroad at the hour when gentlemen were returning from nightly revels? Who could distinguish a ragged cloak from one edged with gold in such darkness? Gentlemen thieves were not to be lightly imposed upon. A varlet who has no angels in his pockets should be abed at dark. For such the sleep that knows no waking is a blessing. This was the argument of the men who had halted the beggar.
As the two men, whose steps we have been following, entered the Old Jewry, their approach was a matter of notice, and as they reached a spot directly before the church, three of the thieves sprang out of the shadows of its projecting entrance. The attack came so unexpectedly that the two men had no chance for flight, and safety seemed to lie only in such effort. In the first grapple, the taller man’s cloak was torn from him, but this was of fortunate occurrence, for it enabled him to draw his sword. His companion had been felled to his knees, but, avoiding another blow aimed at his head, he rose to his feet and staggered to one side. The drawn sword of his friend swung through the air. It cut a face wide open in its career, and was again wielded in like manner, but without effect. Then the wounded robber seized the knees of the swordsman, only to be thrust through and through, as the latter stumbled and fell in the embrace.
In the meantime, the other man assailed, tugging at the hilt of his own sword which was kept from handy withdrawal by the folds of his cloak, retreated backward into the middle of the street. Approaching him was the robber who had delivered the first ineffectual blow. In the tussle he had dropped his bludgeon, and he was now trusting to his own strength to overpower this man before him. Suddenly another sword was out of its scabbard. There was a quick thrust at the dark body between outstretched hands which had almost grasped the swordsman’s neck. A groan escaped from agonized lips, and the wielder of the sword felt warm blood upon his sword hand. His victim had fallen heavily against him, but he pushed him off like so much dead weight, and at that moment he heard his friend’s voice:
“Run, Kit, for thy life!”
“I am with you,” came the answer.
He saw that two other shadows had joined the decimated group. These two had been drowsing on the portico, and at length, aroused by the cries, had come forth. He saw his companion turn and run, and he followed him.
The lights of the windmill tavern streamed across the way, for its doors were open. They reached the fronting pillars of its portico, as though a haven, and then paused. Both of them knew that they could not venture in, and fortunately their assailants had given up the chase.
In the gloom, behind one of the columns, they stood panting. Near them stood a man also in the shadows. Their swift approach had been observed by him; but if he had apprehended the cause, it had not shaken him from his intent to remain concealed. He might have heard the retreating footsteps of their now baffled pursuers, and this should have disturbed him; for the cause of the men who had almost brushed against him was his cause. It was his duty to pursue the assailants; but there are times when the public weal is forgotten—blotted out by thoughts of one’s private welfare. And so it was with the man in the darkness of the portico. The continuance of his ability to act for the public, nay, possibly his existence, depended on different service than the arrest of midnight marauders.
This man was Gyves, the constable, and he was waiting to see Bame leave the tavern so that he might venture in, find Tabbard, and obtain by persuasion or violence the warrant for the arrest of Marlowe. He had waited there for hours, through the mist which had drifted across the portico, and then later, while the drizzling rain had beaten in his face and set him shivering. He had yet no knowledge of the destruction of the writ, and no whisper of the sudden visit of the plague had touched his ears. So it was that the paper, upon which he dreamed his welfare hung, and the man whom he had for the past eight hours yearned most to see, were both beyond power of production to him. But despite all this, the arrest of Marlowe, which was his ultimate object, required at that moment neither the departure of Bame nor his possession of the writ. And furthermore no long weary walk nor tiresome search in an unfamiliar quarter would have been necessary. He could have reached out his hand and have arrested the two men under the neighboring column for a disturbance of the peace. Even then a sword was being sheathed by one of them, and Gyves had heard the late outcry which of itself was sufficient to have justified him in taking them into custody to await further investigation. One of the men was Christopher Marlowe.
To us, with our limited vision, what a comedy is life. Over what scenes of merriment could we not amuse ourselves were we robbed of hearts and consciences and there were added to our remaining faculties the power of unlimited sight alone; to see the struggles of one during a whole life for a result which required only a few days’ effort along another line than that pursued; to see the entanglement, in a single web, of many with worthy designs, and their struggles liberating only that one who as it appeared to us should have remained entangled; to see the life pursuit for a will-o’-the-wisp; to see genius strangled, and dullness triumphant. Perhaps the truth would then burst upon us, that we are but the pawns and knights of the chess-board, moved by an Omniscient hand toward the final victory of the whole.
As the three men held back in the shadows, three more men came forth from the portals of the tavern; but only two of them walked. The third was between the others, but instead of being like them, erect, he was in a horizontal position. He lay upon a stretcher which the two men bore. He was motionless, and a rough cloth covered his form.
Certain it was that the covering of the man upon the stretcher should have concealed his face, but through some inadvertency it had rolled down upon his breast so that his face was revealed. It was expressionless and that of one from whom the soul had fled. A man with flaming torch now ran out of the doors, as though to lead the way, and as the light struck upon the form upon the stretcher, one of the two men who had escaped the murderous, bludgeons of the thieves, clutched his companion’s arm and gasped:
“My God! the dead man is Tabbard.”
Then, as the flaming torch illuminated the man in front, who, with back toward the corpse, bore the stretcher, Marlowe, for he was the speaker, sunk his fingers deep into the clutched arm, for at that moment he heard a voice near him whisper:
“And Bame, Richard Bame, carries him.”
A shadow, shifting with the wavering of the torch, fell across Marlowe’s face. The latter looked to ascertain its cause and also the source of the last words spoken, and saw the outline of a man in the coat of an officer slink from the portico into the rain and the darkness. The torch now revealed an object close to the edge of the pavement. It was a heavy cart with horses attached like the one which had passed Tabbard early that night. His body was being borne toward it.