CHAPTER I
“What star shines yonder in the east?
The loadstar of my life.”
—Marlowe, in The Jew of Malta.
“The 8th we weighed anchor at Plymouth, and departed thence for Virginia.”
With this terse statement of fact an old-time traveller is content to record the beginning of a memorable voyage.
It was on the 8th of May, 1587, that two ships—one known as the Admiral, of a hundred and twenty tons, the other a fly-boat—set sail westward from the coast of England. There was also a pinnace of small burden carried on board the larger vessel, and ready to be manned for the navigation of shallow waters; but this, like a child in arms, was a thing of promise rather than present ability.
The aim of the voyage is briefly outlined: to establish an English colony in Virginia, where previous attempts at settlement had resulted in desertion and no success; to find fifteen men who had been left the year before to hold the territory for England; to plant crops; to produce and manufacture commodities for export; to extend commerce and dominions; to demand the lion’s share between possessions of France and Spain—the great central portion of a continent; and thus in all ways first and last to uphold the supremacy and majesty of England and the queen.
The ships had been provisioned at Portsmouth and Cowes, where many of the colonists embarked, including among the notable ones two Indians, Manteo and Towaye by name, who, several years before, had been brought to England from Roanoke by Arthur Barlow. At Portsmouth, among others, three soldiers came aboard, booted and spurred as though from a recent journey in the saddle; the one slim, tall, and bronzed by the sun; another no shorter, but broad and heavy in proportion; the third laughable in aspect, being fat, as if, like a stage buffoon, he had stuffed a pillow in his doublet, and leading, much to the astonishment of the passengers, a bear-cub that copied his own waddling gait, and followed on a chain of bondage with remarkable fidelity.
In the evening one of these soldiers stood alone on the Admiral’s high stern, a motionless figure, clean-cut against the sky. His eyes, blue like the deep sea, looked back toward the receding coastline, fixed on the dissolving land with a resigned fatality and regret.
With the sun, westward, the two ships went down slowly over the horizon, leaving England a memory behind—a memory, yet very real, while the haven, far ahead, somewhere beneath the crimson sky, seemed but a dream that could not shape itself—a dream, a picture, bright, alluring, undetailed, like the golden painting of the sun. Tall and erect as a naked fir-tree the man stood on the top deck in the stern—still stood when night came and there was not even a melting horizon to hold his gaze—still stood as though to turn would be to wake forever from a vision beside which all things actual must seem unreal. But at last he turned resolutely and, drawing his cloak about him, glanced off toward the darkening west; then, with a word to one and another as he passed his fellow-voyagers, he sought the ship’s master to discuss plans for the maintenance and general welfare of the colony.
As he was about to enter the main cabin a soldier accosted him. “The die is cast, captain.”
“Yes, Rouse; we have done well in starting. May ill fortune throw no better.”
“Nay,” observed the Saxon giant, in low tones. “But already I mistrust this Simon Ferdinando, the master of our ship.”
“He is but a subordinate. We have the governor and his twelve assistants to depend on.”
“Ay, captain, and you.”
“I am one of the twelve.”
“God be praised!” said Hugh, fervently. “But there’s mischief in Simon. I always mislike these small men.”
“You forget our Roger Prat, no higher than your belt; and yet, Hugh Rouse, even you have no greater fidelity.”
“’Tis true, but his breadth is considerable. Cleave him in twain downward, as he’s ofttimes said, then stand his paunch on the top of his head, and Roger Prat would be as tall as any of us. ’Tis merely the manner of measurement.”
“In all things,” said Vytal, with a fleeting smile, and wishing to see this Ferdinando, the Admiral’s master, in order to judge of the man for himself, he entered the main cabin.
With Ferdinando he found John White, the governor appointed by Sir Walter Raleigh, at whose expense the voyage had been undertaken. The governor, whom Vytal had met but once before, was a man of medium stature and engaging personality. His expression, frank and open, promised well for sincere government, but his chin, only partly hidden by a scant beard, lacked strong determination. Ferdinando, on the other hand, to whom Vytal was now introduced for the first time, so shifted his eyes while talking, much as a general moves an army’s front to conceal the true position, that candor had no part in their expression; while his low forehead and close brows bespoke more cunning than ability. He was, moreover, undoubtedly of Latin blood; therefore, in the judgment of Englishmen, given rather to strategy than open courage. Nevertheless, his reputation as a navigator had not yet suffered. That he relied much on this was made evident by his first conversation with Vytal. In answer to the latter’s questions concerning matters that bore directly on the management of the little fleet, Ferdinando replied, “Since Sir Walter Raleigh has wisely left the management to me, you need have no fear, I assure you, regarding your welfare.”
“What, then,” asked Vytal, “if you object not to the inquiry of one who studies that he may duly practise, what, then, are the main rules we observe?”
To this the master made no answer, but, with an air of indulgent patronage, handed Vytal several sheets of paper well filled with writing. The soldier glanced over them, and read among others the following orders: “That every evening the fly-boat come up and speak with the Admiral, at seven of the clock, or between that and eight; and shall receive the order of her course as Master Ferdinando shall direct. If to any man in the fleet there happen any mischance, they shall presently shoot off two pieces by day, and if it be by night two pieces and show two lights.”
When Vytal had read these and many similar articles he turned slowly to Ferdinando. “A careful system. Is it all from your own knowledge?”
“From whose else, think you?”
“I make no conjecture, but only ask if it be yours and yours alone.”
“It is,” replied Simon, and turning to John White, the governor, who had said little, he added, “Your assistant, worshipful sir, seemingly hath doubt of my word.” White turned to Vytal questioningly.
“Nay,” observed the soldier, “I would show no doubt whatever,” and so saying he left the cabin.
Similar conversations followed on subsequent evenings, Ferdinando boasting much of his seamanship; and once the governor went out with Vytal from the room of state. “You mistrust our ship’s master, Captain Vytal, although you would show it not on considering the expedience of harmony. Wherefore this lack of faith?”
“Because the orders and articles are framed exactly upon the plan of those issued by Frobisher in 1578, when he sought a northwest passage, and by Sir Humphrey Gilbert in 1583, changed, of course, to suit our smaller fleet. The worthy Ferdinando has effected a wise combination; he has done well—and lied in doing it.”
The governor looked up into Vytal’s dark face for the first time, searchingly. “How came you to know?” he queried.
“I remember things.”
“But where—”
“I forget other things,” was Vytal’s answer. “An you’ll permit me I’ll leave you. There’s a man’s face under that light”—he was walking toward it now alone—“a familiar face,” he repeated to himself, and the next minute exclaimed in amazement, “’Tis the man who fought beside me on the bridge!”
“Ay,” said the poet, smiling, “’tis Kyt Marlowe,[2] at your service in reality.”
Vytal scrutinized him keenly, Christopher returning the gaze with a look of admiration that increased as his eyes fell once more on the so-called bodkin at the soldier’s side. “You are readier with that implement than with your tongue,” he observed, finally.
“The most important questions,” returned Vytal, “are asked with an upraised eyebrow, an impatient eye.” There was an abrupt cogency and gravity of manner about the soldier that sometimes piqued his fellows into an attempted show of indifference by levity and freedom of utterance. They made as though they would assert their independence and disavow an allegiance that was demanded only by the man’s strong, compelling personality, and seldom or never by a word. He was masterful, and they, recognizing the silent mastery, must for pride’s sake rebel before succumbing to its power. Marlowe, with all his admiration, born of the soldier’s far-famed prowess and imperious will, proved no exception to this rule.
“I marvel,” he observed, with a slight irony and daring banter, “that so dominant a nature is readily subject to the coercive beauty of women’s faces. Even the Wolf’s eyes may play the—”
“What?”
“The sheep’s.” It was a bold taunt, and the poet was surprised at his own effrontery. But like a child he saw the fire as a plaything.
“Explain.” The word came from Vytal quietly and with no impatience.
“Oh, there have been other beguiling faces, so I’ve heard. A tale is told—” he hesitated.
“Of whom?”
“Of you.”
“What is it?”
“A tale vaguely hinting at a court amour. ’Tis said the queen would have knighted a certain captain for deeds of valor in the south; but at the moment of her promising the spurs, she found him all unheedful of her words, found him, in fact, with eyes gazing off entranced at a girlish face in the presence chamber, the face of her Majesty’s youngest lady-in-waiting. To those who saw our Queen Elizabeth then and read her face, the issue was seemingly plainer than day, blacker than night.
“‘Nay, Captain Vytal,’ said the queen, her lip curling with that smile of hers which is silent destiny itself—‘nay, she is not for you; nor yet is knighthood either. Our boons are not lightly thrown away, so lightly to be received.’ And then, says the tale, she paused with a frown, to cast about for an alternative to the benefit she would, a moment before, have conferred most graciously. From her dark expression the courtiers supposed that ignominy would take the place of compliment in the soldier’s cup. But at this instant her Majesty’s favorite, Sir Walter Raleigh, ‘Knight of the Cloak,’ made bold to intervene on his friend’s behalf. ‘An I may venture,’ he said, in a low voice, ‘to argue the case before so unerring a judge, I would assert from my own experience that this man’s first sudden sight of a divine radiance has dazzled and blinded him, so that perforce he must seek a lesser brilliancy to accustom his eyes to the perfect vision. The moth, despairing of a star, falls to the level of a candle.’ Then her Majesty turned to Sir Walter with a changing, kinder look. And before she could glance again at the captain to seek for an acquiescence to the flattery (which, I believe, would have been sought in vain, for the soldier is said to be desperate true), before she could harbor a second resentful thought, the knight spoke again. ‘There is an augury about this Captain Vytal,’ he declared, ‘a prophecy sung at his birth by a roving gypsy maid. “He shall be,” said she, “a queen’s defender—the brother of a king.” I pray your Majesty leave him free to prove the truth of this prediction. There is but one queen to whom it can refer, for there is one queen only under heaven worthy of the name. Of the king I know not, but it may be that the king, too, is our most gracious sovereign, Elizabeth, for while in beauty and grace she is a queen, in majesty and regal strength no monarch is more kingly. “A queen’s defender—the brother of a king.” It has all the presumption of a prophet’s words. For the latter condition is impossible; none can ever rise so high as to be honored by your Majesty with the name of brother’—Sir Walter’s voice sank almost to a whisper—‘indeed,’ he added, daringly, ‘none would choose the name. But—a queen’s defender—that means more.’
“Her Majesty turned to the soldier. ‘Would you be your queen’s defender to the end?’ she demanded, sternly, but now without menace in her voice.
“‘To the death.’
“‘Appoint him,’ she said to Raleigh, ‘where you will. The spurs are yet to be won by the defence.’”
Marlowe paused, his story finished. “And thus, you see,” he added, as Vytal made no rejoinder, “I was right in saying that more than one fair face had hazarded your welfare.”
“No, you were wrong.”
The poet’s dark eyes opened wide with a query, but he said nothing in words, for the feeling of pique had already passed with his airy rebellion against the other’s trenchant monosyllables.
“The face in court,” avowed Vytal, as though half to himself, “and the face in the Southwark Gateway, belong to one and the same woman. I ask you outright wherefore you met me not at the ‘Tabard Inn’? Whither went the maid?”
“Now there,” replied Marlowe, his eyes cast down, “I must play the silent part. In truth, I know not.”
“Know not?”
“Nay, for when we had come safely from the porter’s lodge, she demanded that I should take her to a barge, that she might go thereby to London. We had no more than set foot within the boat, and I was questioning her as to the directions I should give the waterman, when another wherry came beside us, seemingly just arrived from across the river, and a man in that, scrutinizing us, slowly spoke to her. Then, thanking me, and bidding me thank you for that which she said was beyond all payment, she entered the wherry with the other, and was quickly conveyed toward London.”
For several minutes Vytal was silent; then at last he asked, quietly, “Did the man call her by name?”
“By the name of Eleanor.”
“And she said no more of me?”
“Yes, much, as we went toward the river; much concerning your gallantry; and from the barge wherein she sat, beside her new-found friend, she cried back to me that with all speed they would send you aid to the bridge. ’Tis evident the assistance came.”
Vytal made no denial. The method of his escape was but a trifling detail of the past. He shrugged his shoulders. “’Tis well I strive not only for reward.”
“Was it not reward,” asked the poet, “to look once upon that face with the eye of a protector?”
“Yes,” said Vytal.
“And to see her bosom heave gently to the rise and fall of the universal life-breath tide, which alone hath poetry’s perfect motion, and to note its trouble in the rhythm as in the breast of a sleeping sea—was that not recompense?”
“Yes.”
“And her eyes—the privilege to tell of them, to wonder vainly, and seek with all poetic fervor for words that hold their spirit—is it not invaluable reward?”
“Yes,” said Vytal.
“They might well,” declared the poet, “be the twin stars of a man’s destiny.”
“Yes,” and the two men, standing amidships near the rail, looked at each other steadfastly, Marlowe at the last turning his gaze downward to the starlit water. It seemed to Vytal as though a spell held his eyes fixed on the poet’s face, across which the lanthorn gleams fell uncertainly, intensifying a shadow that came not only from outward causes. And the spell possessing Vytal, portended some new condition—change—tidings—he could not tell what.
Suddenly Marlowe, as if by an impulse, caught his arm. “Vytal, she is there.” He pointed to the light of the fly-boat far behind. “She came aboard at Plymouth with a slim, weak-seeming fellow whom I take to be her brother, for his name, like hers, is Dare—Ananias Dare, one of the governor’s assistants. ’Twas he who met her at the bridge. Vytal, she is there.”
The soldier followed his gaze. “There!” The word came in a vague tone of wonder, as from a sleeper at the gates of a dream; and with no comment, no reproach, no question, Vytal went away to be alone.
For many minutes after he had gone, Marlowe stood looking into the shrouds, but at last, as though their shadows palled on his buoyant spirit, he wandered along the deck, singing to himself a song of genuine good cheer. And soon, to his delight, the notes of a musical instrument, coming from somewhere amidships, half accompanied his tune. Eagerly he sought the player, and came on a scene that pleased him. For there against the bulwark sat a stout vagabond cross-legged on the deck, strumming merrily on a cittern, as though rapidity of movement were the sole desire of his heart. The instrument, not unlike a lute, but wire-strung, and therefore more metallic in sound, rested somewhat awkwardly on his knee, for his stomach, being large, kept it from a natural position. The player’s fat hand, nevertheless, with a plectrum between the thumb and forefinger, jigged across the strings, his round head keeping time the while and his pop-eyes rolling.
“’Tis beyond doubt that Roger Prat,” said Marlowe to himself, “Vytal’s vagabond follower, and avenger of King Lud, the bear.”
Ranged around this striking figure were many forms, dark, uncertain, confused in outline, and above the forms faces—faces vaguely lighted by an overhanging lanthorn, and varied in expression, yet all rough, coarse, uncouthly jubilant with wine and song.
In the middle of this half-circle a woman sat predominant in effect. Her hair, riotous about her neck, shone like gold in the wavering gleam; her red lips were parted witchingly. She was singing low a popular catch, in which “heigh-ho,” “sing hey,” and “welladay,” as frequent refrains, were the only intelligible phrases.
On seeing Marlowe she rose, even the refrains becoming inarticulate in the laughter of her greeting.
“Why, ’tis Kyt!” she cried—“Kind Kyt, the poet!” whereat, much to the amusement of her admiring audience, she stepped lightly toward him and, throwing her head back, asked outright, “Saw you ever so comely a youth?” then, with a coquettish, bantering look at the cittern-player, “Good-night, Roger Prat, I’m going,” and she led Marlowe away into the darkness.
“Gyll!” he exclaimed, “Gyll Croyden! Is’t really thee? How camest thou to leave thy Bankside realm, thy conquest of rakes and gallants?”
She laughed anew at this and shrugged her shoulders. “How camest thou, Kyt Marlowe, to leave thy Blackfriars, and thy conquest of play-house folk, for the wild Virginia voyage?”
The poet laughed as carelessly as herself. “Because ’tis wild,” he answered. “Indeed, I know no other reason.”
“It is my own,” she said. “I grew stale in London.”
“Not thy voice, Gyll. Methinks ’tis all for that I like thee.”
She pouted, then smiled contentedly. “Come, Kyt, away into the bow. I’ll sing to thee alone.”
And in another part of the ship Vytal was recalling one of the rules of sailing, “That every evening the fly-boat come up and speak with the Admiral, at seven of the clock, or between that and eight; and shall receive the order of her course as Master Ferdinando shall direct.”
“To-morrow at seven of the clock,” he repeated, “or between that and eight.”