IN THE PRINCE’S WARDROBE.
But stay, what star shines yonder in the East?
—Jew of Malta, ii, 1.
But soft: what light through yonder window breaks?
It is the East—
—Romeo and Juliet, ii, 2.
Marlowe and Tamworth now followed the example of the constable and, having moved silently along the street, in a few moments were in the wide and dark hall of a large building near the church of St. Olave.
“Hold to my arm,” said Tamworth, “This is the Prince’s Wardrobe.”
“And entered without turning so much as a knob or lifting a latch,” responded Marlowe.
“Here we climb the King’s staircase,” said Tamworth, as one of his advancing feet struck against an obstacle.
The morn was breaking, but the interior of the building, although open and windswept, was wrapped in utter darkness. Nought could be distinguished of the broken columns down the long hall, the tesselated pavement under foot, the marred frescoes of the walls, the blackened stucco of the ceilings, the solid staircase with heavy stone balustrade ascending to a middle landing. Once the principal palace of King Henry VI, it had long since been remodeled and adapted to plebeian uses. It has even survived its fitness for the latter shifts, and partially dismantled by man and ruined by time it stood simply as a landmark of the fourteenth century.
The few words of the lawyer set moving through the poet’s mind a vision of splendid pageantry. The great hall rose out of shadow, bright with the illumination of a thousand lamps, and across its shining floor and up and down the marble stairway moved figures resplendent in the pomp of royalty—men of magnificent mien in cloaks of cloth of gold and waving plumes; court sycophants with cringing shoulders under their rich mantles; clowns in cap and bells and spangles; fair ladies in regal robes, their faces beautiful in youth, or growing queenly with the marks of age. All were raised as at a masque under the signal of the Master of the Revels.
And this interior scene, from which kings, courtiers and the fairest and most womanly of women were to be drawn for all time, was not his only vision of the tumultuous past. Outside, again, Jack Cade, with his rebels, Kentish peasants, ragged mendicants and starvelings of the alleys, swept defiantly through the Old Jewry and halted with deafening uproar before the barricaded entrance. There at their head, he saw the “shag-haired crafty kerne” and, close pressing him, the leather-aproned smiths and hedge-born hinds, awkward soldiers of the day’s enlistment, from whose base lips all the drolleries of the seamy side of life were to issue.
And he, the magic creator of forms more palpable and enduring than those of clay, groping in the darkness which might never be lifted, was thus beginning the conjuration of the everlasting.
“Marlowe,” exclaimed Tamworth, noticing the lack of pressure on his arm, and his friend’s faltering footsteps. “You drag your feet as though in sleep. See, the clouds are breaking and the gray of the dawn is about us.”
They were passing along an upper corridor, and at its end, through the glassless spaces between the mullions of a lancet window, a glow was spreading so that the rear gables of the row of houses on the Lothbury could be seen shaking themselves free of the murky air. Above their steaming roofs, slender columns of smoke were rising from the cold mouths of chimneys, and early fires made gleaming spots on many of the distant walls. The last wet gust of the storm had splashed upon the open casement through which now came, like a benison, the pure breath of morning.
Down the corridor they turned, and, at length halted, while Tamworth with a great key which he had taken from a sunken niche in the wall, unlocked and swung open a narrow door. Through this they entered an apartment whose single window did not yet admit enough light to render distinctly visible the interior. The air was cold and damp, and for the moment the place seemed as gloomy as a vault. Tamworth hastily lighted a lamp, which at first flamed upward with black smoke, and as it did so Marlowe glancing around him, uttered an exclamation of surprise.
“You notice that something more than a mere vestige of past regal splendor remains here,” said Tamworth, smiling.
“Why, I should judge that the door had just closed upon the departure of the prince.”
“A hundred years ago,” answered Tamworth.
“And—” began his companion.
“Has remained vacant until I entered as its occupant.”
“Why this long disuse?”
“It is in a retired wing of the building. Only two keepers have had charge since the Crown parted with its title. The first, from what may have been an over-refined reverence for royalty, held this apartment locked and almost secret. His successor found no use for it until I solicited lodgment. He gave me possession five years since.”
“It is a wonder that the tapestries have not been removed,” said Marlowe, looking in admiration at one end of the room where hung two magnificent fabrics, still displaying in enduring colors scenes from the Apocalypse. They were drawn back from the middle line of the alcove before which they hung; and, in the recess thus disclosed, the outlines of a bed, with gorgeous canopy overhanging it, could be seen. Other textiles of equally antique manufacture, at many points detached from the fastenings, hung here and there against the walls. Separate pieces of Oriental carpet lay over some spaces of the floor. The furniture was dark as ebony. A lamp of brass, with four projecting wings and blackened chains, suspended from the center of the ceiling. The deep and wide chimney-place was fit for a fire great enough to warm the banqueting hall of a castle. Its mantel was supported by elaborately carved columns standing half out from the front of the chimney-wall.
“And where does that stairway lead?” asked Marlowe, pointing at a dark opening in the floor beside one wall. It was guarded by a brass railing raised waist-high on a closely set balustrade, and at its foot could be seen a solid door held shut by an iron bar across its face.
“To an underground passageway.”
“For escape?”
“Evidently.”
“And ends where?”
“Under a marble slab which must be somewhere in the chancel of the church of St. Olave. I have passed along it measuring the distance.”
“But never issued at the other end?”
“No. The slab is closely set in its place, but it hath hinges on its lower side.”
“And on its upper side, I doubt not,” said Marlowe ironically, “are the words in fair letters ‘Touch not mine annointed’?”
“Possibly,” rejoined Tamworth.
“If the king ever rose from the grave,” said Marlowe, smiling, “I imagine that he took great pains to conceal it.”
“There is no tradition that this room was ever occupied by a king or a prince; but what I know of the life and character of the weak and unfortunate monarch, Henry the Sixth, taken in connection with the arrangement of this room and its adjoining secret chamber, convinces me that a crowned head once rested on the bed within the alcove.”
“Ah, the secret room is an oratory, is it?”
“You surprise me,” exclaimed Tamworth, “how could that have reached your ears?”
“I simply inferred it, for I certainly do not think that the secret tunnel into the chancel was for the purpose of easy attendance upon divine service.”
Tamworth smiled, and Marlowe continued speaking:
“I knew of the imbecility of that prince and the strength of his religious devotion; and naturally in my mind was raised the picture of a world-weary king in penitential cell.”
“You are right,” returned the lawyer. “See.”
He parted the heavy and worm-eaten hangings suspended from the ornamental cornice of the wall beside the painted window. The outline of what appeared to be a walled window appeared. Its sill, like that of the one that was open and uncovered, was only a foot above the floor. He pressed on one of the mullions, which, although apparently blocked with stone on both sides, remained standing out from the surface of the wall. This surface rolled inward as he pressed. The opening was wide enough to admit the passing of a man in stooping posture.
“Come,” said Tamworth.
He stepped upon the stone sill, and as Marlowe, holding back the musty tapestry for a moment, pressed close in his wake, he entered a small room.
They were in what was certainly a devotional chamber. Before them in the center wall of a semi-circular recess, or exedra, was a gilded crucifix in bas-relief. A stone canopy extended from the top of this recess, and was still fringed with heavy black velvet. At the bottom of the recess was a platform slightly raised above the floor of the room. One could imagine that this low ambo bore the imprints of the knees of the royal penitent.
The ceiling was dome-shaped overhead, as severe in its smoothness and absence of tracery as the supporting walls, which without curvature, fronted each other with a space between of twenty feet in length and twelve in breadth. In the face of one wall, near the floor, was a dark cavity, with an iron basket within it, for the maintenance of fire during prolonged self-communion. A leather-covered couch stood in one corner, and before it hung a lamp in rusty chains. An iron table, with legs covered with elaborate scrollwork, stood at the end of the room furthest from the couch. Upon its top was a great black-lettered Mazarin Bible, and beside it was a solid square-seated chair with high carved back. Above this table hung a lamp similar to the one near the couch; and in the smoky wall behind it was a square window covered with an iron lattice. The strips of the lattice were narrow, and not closely crossed, so that the entrance of daylight was little hindered. But no sunshine could enter, for two buttresses extended far beyond its exterior face, thus concealing it from the glance of vagrant eyes in the narrow church-yard of St. Olave. It looked upon that seldom-visited but thick-tenanted piece of burial-earth.
“So there the king prayed,” murmured Marlowe, pointing toward the crucifix, while Tamworth nodded.
“And there he rested?” continued Marlowe, turning his gaze toward the couch. No reply came from Tamworth, who, with sad expression on his face, remained a listener.
“And there he studied and meditated upon the mutability of worldly things,” added Tamworth, solemnly, as both glanced in the direction of the chair and Bible.
“Study, meditation, prayer, and slumber,” repeated Marlowe, as though to himself.
“Once the occupation of a king,” said Tamworth.
“And,” added the other, “mine also until death.”
Tamworth was aroused from a morning sleep by the pressure of a hand upon his shoulder. He was lying undressed upon the bed within the alcove where he had thrown himself after the inspection of the secret oratory. He had vainly endeavored to induce Marlowe to gain rest by slumber; but the latter had alternately walked the floor and occupied a chair before the window. His restlessness of mind was still beyond control. The faint figures of the angels on the tapestries, the scroll work on the chimney-columns, the dragon head from whose mouth came the lamp chains, and the green trees within the courtyard, attracted his attention only temporarily. Stronger than these objects presented to his bodily eyes were the mind’s pictures of the eventful night: his meeting with Anne, the sword combat, the stripping of the slain, the conference at the Boar’s Head, the dead face of Tabbard, and his future place of study. He could not shut them out; and with them were troubled thoughts concerning Anne. The hours passed; he watched the unbroken slumber of his friend, and, at length unable to remain inactive, he shook the sleeper into consciousness.
“What will occur to-day at the Golden Hind?” he asked as soon as the lawyer was awake.
“Still brooding on that? You better sleep, Kit, and drown consciousness for a few hours.”
“No; answer me.”
“The inquest will be held at the tavern, and in the room where the body lies.”
“You must be there,” said Marlowe in a decided tone.
“For what purpose?”
“To see the woman.”
“Forget her,” said Tamworth.
“No; but more if she has been apprehended, she may need aid or advice.”
“Possibly,” answered Tamworth, and then after a moment’s thought he continued: “She may even need to be warned against a betrayal of the true situation of affairs.”
Marlowe was on the point of disputing this imputation of bad faith; but he held his peace, for he saw that this idea alone would cause the lawyer to hasten to the scene of the crime.
“I will go,” at length said Tamworth.
“And tell her where I am, and that she must keep me posted as to her whereabouts, and that I hope for final deliverance. Tell her that I think of her as of old. Tell her, that the future, though dark, may clear. Tell her to wait for me. My God! can you not bring her back with you? Let no—”
“Hold! hold, man!” exclaimed Tamworth, “this matter is too fresh in the minds of those who surround her. They think that you are dead and that the slayer is her husband. Every movement of hers will be watched. A visit like that here would be fatal. I will do what I can, but nothing rash.”
“It rests with thee, then,” resumed Marlowe, pressing his friend’s hand, “you recognize the depth of my love. Do everything in thy power to prevent an everlasting separation between us. Do not increase my despair, I pray you. I may fence myself from the world. I may succeed in drowning the memory of my friends, their faces, their voices; I may so dwell that hope is a word of no import, and the future purposeless and empty; but still there is one link in life that must not be severed.”
“I understand,” said Tamworth, feelingly, “whatever can be done with safety shall be done. Rid thy mind of these morbid ideas, or every line you write be tinctured with them. There is much yet for you to live for. The future is not so dark as you picture.”
Marlowe shook his head without replying.
“Now,” continued Tamworth, “we will see what my purveyor has for us. It will be light to-day, but before to-morrow there shall be notice given of my increase of appetite.”
He threw open the richly paneled door of what appeared to be a mediæval portable wardrobe. A shelf in its interior slowly sank under pressure of his hand, and disappeared from view down a dark shaft.
“It is late for the morning meal, but good mistress Pickle will send up something for us. The keeper and his wife live directly below, and whenever I signal with the dumb waiter, it soon rises with the best the cupboard and fire-place afford.”