THE SACKING OF ST. OLAVE.
What God, or fiend, or spirit of the earth,
Or monster turned to a manly shape,
Or of what mould or metal be he made,
Let us put on our meet encountering minds.
—I Tamburlaine, ii, 6.
What art thou that ursurp’st this time of night
Together with that fair and warlike form
In which the majesty of buried Denmark
Did sometimes march?
—Hamlet, i, 1.
A storm of almost unprecedented fury had prevailed in London from early evening on June —, 1593. The wind, coming strong from the northeast, increased in violence as the hours passed, and out of heavy black clouds the rain fell in torrents. It was a night for everyone in Middlesex to be well housed and forgetful of the sea. Again and again, the sole inmate of the oratory in the Prince’s Wardrobe had looked out into the night. He could not see beyond the flying buttresses at the edges of the window, except when an occasional flash of lightning seared the darkness. Under these flashes the near churchyard appeared as fleeting and as sorrowful as the face of the fallen angel in our dreams; and the venerable walls of St. Olave looked even more venerable and gloomy as they stood forth with startling distinctness. Every cranny became a marked feature of its visible side and the long windows from their deep setting showed the thickness of the masonry and the rankness of the century-growth of vines that clustered around them.
It was the night on which Marlowe expected meeting Anne, and the storm made him apprehensive that their plans might be frustrated. This uneasiness caused him to leave the oratory long before the appointed hour. Tamworth was not in his apartment as Marlowe entered it, and with lighted candle descended the stairs into the underground passage leading to the church. He reached its end with hasty steps, and having on a previous night succeeded in putting in working order the hinges on the slab that had blocked further passage, he entered the chancel of the church. A darkness as absolute as that of the night prevailed in the church, except where, at the distance of a hundred feet, the lights from the chantry shone across a strip of benches or rude pews. He crept cautiously to the open door of this chantry to see that no one was in it and then retraced his steps to the chancel where he lowered the raised slab to its place, taking care to feel its distance from the rail near at hand. He then passed through the body of the church, and having reached the middle door at the front, he unbolted it and stepped without. He felt across every step of the wide entrance, and finding that he was alone, he took up his station near the door which he had loosely closed.
It was about this time that Bame left his house and started for St. Olave. Before doing so he had taken off his conventional garb and donned his shabbiest suit. Bame was not accustomed to carry any weapon, but the storm and the darkness prompted him to belt a sword to his waist. It was with difficulty that he made any progress in the storm, and at length reached the steps of the church. Here he stood for a moment in the meager shelter afforded by one of the columns of the portico, and then began moving with extended hands toward the entrance. He could see nothing, and for some time in his measured progress he encountered nothing but open space or the stone wall. Suddenly a flash of lightning illuminated the portico. In it he saw a man in loose cloak standing beside him. Neither had realized the presence of the other until the flash revealed it; but in it Bame caught no glimpse of Marlowe’s face.
“Hold!” he said, as the cloaked figure stepped backward and again was entirely enveloped by the darkness. If there were any answer to this command, it was drowned by the roll of thunder which followed the lightning.
“You await a lady here, do you not?” continued Bame, proceeding on the theory that the man was Francis Frazer, “Well, I come with word from her.”
Still no answer came. Bame reached forward and touched the shoulder of the silent figure, saying as he did so, “I come from Anne.”
“So, what is the message?”
“She is held in custody by the coroner.”
“For what purpose?”
“As a witness before the grand jury.”
“When did you see her?”
“On the day of the inquest.”
“Who are you?”
There was something in the voice that struck Bame peculiarly. He had heard it before, but somehow it created a feeling of awe, and an involuntary shudder passed through him. The reason of this feeling was not apparent. He was anxious to determine its cause. He answered the last question by one like it.
“Who are you?”
“What is the purpose of your query? Are you not satisfied that I am the person whom you seek? You came from one at Deptford. Is that not sufficient to assure you? If she did not tell you who I am, there is no occasion for your knowing.”
Bame felt impelled to say that the reason of his asking was because he thought he knew the speaker, or at least the voice was familiar; but his natural caution restrained him. He said with ill reason:
“Before I delivered the message I wished to be assured that you were the one for whom it was intended.”
“Out upon you,” said the other, “If she gave you no name, my telling it could give you no assurance; but this talk is idle while gusts of rain blow in upon us. You have found me. Have done with words. What is the message?”
“It is written,” said Bame.
“Well, give it me,” exclaimed the other impatiently.
“There is an answer expected.”
“And you are to bear it?”
“Yes; where can you read while I wait?”
“Within the church. A light burns in the chantry.”
Bame fumbled in the pocket of his doublet, and then he said: “I can not distinguish it from other papers. I require a light to find it. Let us step to the nearest tavern.”
“Nay, ’twould be a waste of time. Follow me.”
He pushed on the door behind him, and Bame heard hinges creak, but all about him was still wrapped in darkness.
“Into the church?” he faltered.
“Aye. Not a word.”
His hand was grasped and he followed. He felt his entrance to be a sacrilege and his awe concerning his companion increased his trepidation. When at length the entrance to the body of the church was reached, a faint glow of light could be seen from a narrow space in one wall. Toward this they moved up the dark aisle, feeling the unseen pews as they passed. Upon facing this glowing space, they perceived the chantry. It was so small that it hardly merited the name; but, rising from the marble floor, was the low, richly-carved tomb of the founder of the church, with raised font before it, and, in niches in the wall behind it, six blazing candles. Its walls were of solid stone and no other door or windows opened from it. The arched ceiling rose scarcely eight feet overhead and bore no tracery nor stucco work upon its surface. Into this chantry they entered. Bame, forgetting to make a pretended search in his pocket for the message, hastily handed it to Marlowe. And now the lights were near and strong enough to show clearly the faces of the two men. Bame’s eyes and mouth bespoke an astonishment that almost robbed him of the power of speech. He recognized the man beside him, but the latter without even a glance at his companion, nervously broke the seal of the letter, and passing around the tomb, held it so that the rays from the candles fell upon it. Bame had noticed that Marlowe was without a sword, and before the second line of the message had been read he interrupted the reading with the words:
“I thought thou wast dead.”
Marlowe raised his eyes and glared in wonder at the speaker, who continued:
“Thou art Christopher Marlowe.”
Marlowe leaned back against the wall with his hands so tightly clenched that their nails almost entered his palms. The scowl grew deep on his face, but no words came from his lips. It seemed no occasion for speech, and action on his part was forestalled; for Bame had drawn his short sword.
“I am Richard Bame. You have undoubtedly heard of me as the uncle of Anne.”
“And as the swearer of false and vile charges against the man of whom you speak,” said Marlowe, his voice impetuously breaking forth.
“Against yourself,” interrupted Bame, “but not as a false accuser. Listen to me.”
“But why should I; and why have you drawn a weapon? You see that I am defenseless. You came in the character of a bearer of good tidings; why do you now assume a violent front? Is it not enough that I am the friend of the one from whom you come—your niece? Have I ever wronged you? Put down your sword! even though the time were opportune for murder, the sanctity of the place should stay your hand. Doth not its holiness appeal to thee?”
Bame began with the echo of the last word:
“You speak well, but to no purpose. You have rendered me no personal injury, but you have attacked not only my church, but all churches, all faith, all religions. No,” he continued, shaking his sword in his fervor as Marlowe was about to reply, “Let me go on. Nothing is sacred in thine eyes——”
“Cease,” exclaimed Marlowe, “You know little of what you speak. Blinded by a fanaticism, narrow, violent and perverted, you can see nothing good in aught that promotes pleasure and breaks the chrysalis of joy. You would tear down the playhouses, and on the spot where laughter has chased the gloom from the face of grief and apathy, and where new generations are being educated in the history of the past and in the polished manners of the higher classes, a school, wide, noble and elevating, you would erect houses for wailing and for the blind worship of an unknown God. And I, whom you deem the head and front of atheism, you wished burned at the stake, and now would take upon thyself what your religion deems an unpardonable crime, that of sending my soul unprepared before its Maker.”
“Maker!”, sneered Bame, “Maker, Thou hast denied the existence of the Trinity.”
“Such denial,” began Marlowe, undisturbed by the accusation, “is not inconsistent with the belief in the existence of a supreme intellectual force of which my soul is part. Thy mind is too narrow to comprehend the impersonal and omniscient intellect that rules by unswerving laws. Clinging to the disgusting belief of a resurrection of the body, you bury it with pomp and lamentation; waste over it your tears, and dream of its reinhabitation as the temple of the soul. Out upon thee. The tenure of thy faith is most precarious. Under the dark wings of death, nought but the longing for eternal rest will pervade thee, like it has pervaded and ever will pervade all manner of men, whether with or without creed or belief. But such longing contains no assurance of its attainment, but is only the reconcilement of the soul to its coming change of existence without the trammels of the flesh. And this, I tell thee, blind apostle of a worn-out creed, this world is governed by a force that worketh ever toward perfection; the perfection of the material is in beauty; of the spiritual, in wisdom. And both matter and spirit are eternal. Immortality is not a dream but a demonstrable fact. Do not the waters of the stream break in silver spray, or become mirrors for the face of nature, or, being lifted by the sun, form the clouds whose glorious colors flame and fade at twilight? Do not even the dull boulders at length present glassy faces, or, crumbling, form the powdered soil on which flourishes and, aye, is part of, the wild flowers? Do not the brilliant stars rise from the nebula that strews the floor of heaven; thus struggling through a thousand changes toward ideal beauty in form, never losing one atom of substance? And now what of the mind of man? It grows with years and attains its utmost perfection as the bodily forces fail. Then comes the disintegration of the body for new forms as the ages roll. If the material cannot be lost, how can the spirit, the ego that knows, and is as superior to the clay as the living face of woman is to the clod under foot? It must continue under the force that raised it, and in its just line of aspiration. It is against the nature of all things, material and spiritual, that the mind with its accumulated knowledge from years of life should pass into oblivion.”
The eloquence of the poet in the delivery of his sermon of the soul had stilled the voluble Bame. Marlowe appeared, for the moment, in Bame’s mind as a martyr of persecution. He could have chewed the accusation and swallowed it if he had had it. In the transport of these friendly feelings he felt tempted to sheath his sword, but at that moment the sounds of footsteps attracted their attention, and they became intent auditors. Low voices reached their ears, and the noise created by the stumbling movements of many persons in the darkness came with shocking distinctness. Bame stood nearest the folding doors of the chantry.
“Close them,” whispered Marlowe, pointing.
Bame turned in instant response, and pushed to the narrow doors, bolting them. But circular openings were in their fronts, and seeing this, Marlowe hastily extinguished the burning candles. The voices came nearer, and the footsteps now sounded in the aisles.
“It cannot be the watchmen, for they are many.”
“And bear no lanterns.”
“It may be a band of thieves.”
“Did you not bar the entrance door?”
“No, I did not even close it.”
“Hush!” murmured Bame, “and see——”
A faint light flared up in one of the aisles, and then another and another. Each increased in volume of flame until several torches were blazing here and there in the body of the church. They were borne aloft over moving heads, and the two men in the chantry saw villainous faces and ragged forms. It was a score of the most desperate thieves of the Straits, who, having found the loosely closed door of the church opened wide by a furious blast of the storm, had entered like water into the broken hold of a vessel. The fierce desire for plunder had robbed them of caution, and they had become emboldened by their numbers. Possibly they had not thought that the exterior appearance of the lighted church would cause alarm, and it is questionable whether such thought would have stayed them. Then began a scene of spoliation which, in splendor of setting and fierceness of its moving figures, beggars description.
Seldom, if ever, had a house of worship blazed with like illumination. Black smoke arose from the wavering torches, but it was lost in the great space intervening between the spots where it took flight and the groined ceiling, so that nothing obscured the painted windows, the flamboyant tracery above them, and the great arch over the chancel and the altar, except the shadows thrown by intercepting columns. The brilliant colored faces of the saints upon the lancet windows appeared to look down in wonder upon the vandals, whose glances in turn directed upward to these rows of costly panes were the extreme of covetousness. It was only the insurmountable space that kept these pictured saints inviolate. But there were other treasures which held no positions of safety against unholy and unlawful onslaught, and it was toward them that the robbers now directed attention. They began stripping the gilt trappings from the altar and the pulpit, tearing down the purple tapestry before the sacristry, gathering up the chalices, books and vestments, and even wrenching the brass balusters from the winding rood stair to the choir. It may have been their intense action or the awfulness of the surroundings, that closed all lips from the moment that, with eyes feasting on the splendors of the church, they began its desecration. However that may have been, no sound of human voice accompanied the furious workings of the robbers. Still, silence did not prevail. There were blows of solid substances together, rasping of metals, tearings of cloth, and their echoes prolonged by a construction of dome, walls and galleries calculated to keep every sound alive.
Toward the closed chantry, two robbers at length turned. One thrust his torch through a circular window of the door, and the two men within sunk on the marble floor close by the tomb of the founder. The eyes of the thief should have followed the torch, but at that moment a cry attracted his attention, and he saw the tapestry hanging against the wall behind the pulpit wrapped in fierce flames.
It had been kindled by the careless handling of one of the torches, and bid fair to supplement the night’s work with total destruction. While that sight first drew attention, another sight and the sound of shrill voices immediately caused diversion. New figures had suddenly appeared at the wide entrances to the body of the church, and a new fear ran like wildfire through the scattered mob of thieves. There was no outlet except where the alarmed and hastily gathered watchmen were standing. The blazing tapestry forced the robbers forward. None of their spoils were dropped. Having grouped together for an instant, they rushed recklessly toward the entrances held by the watchmen, who could not repel the onslaught. Excepting three who stumbled and fell, the thieves poured forth into the street.
Marlowe was first upon his feet after the withdrawal of the searching torch. He saw the blazing tapestry and the mad rush of the cornered robbers. He unbolted the door, flung it open and without a glance behind him, ran down the aisle and entered the chancel. The light aided him in his rapid survey. He recognized the tomb by which he had ascended, and, lifting the slab, he crawled under into the passage made for the king. In the oratory, a few moments later, he searched his clothes nervously for the still unread message from Anne. It was not to be found, and the meeting of the night had resulted in nought but perplexity and misfortune.
It was not until Marlowe had mysteriously disappeared, that Bame gathered himself for action. He thought of no chance for escape except through the way he had entered. He attempted it, and, having traversed with expedition the aisles and narthex of the church now brilliantly lighted by the flames of the burning tapestry and its supports, he ran into the arms of the watchman in the portico to which the latter had withdrawn. His protestations were of no avail. In vain he pleaded that he had just come up from the sidewalk. Three officers had seen him issue from the church entrance. As one of the thieves he was taken into custody.