“An’ I do that,” said the playwright, “a curse will lie on my soul for ever-more.”
CHAPTER XVII
AFTER their fine repast at the Crown, Gervase and Anne left Oxford at once. Soon they were in the pleasant meadows that lay all about that famous city. It was a really glorious morning of the early summer, with the sun, which day by day had scorched them, more powerful than ever.
All the forenoon they wandered idly in the fields. Anne shamed her boy’s apparel by plucking the wild flowers, gathering a great posy. There seemed hardly need for a care just then. They had money enough to carry them through the day and even provide a modest lodging at nightfall. The grass in which they lay for long hours was soft, dry, delicious.
Every day that passed strengthened the sense of comradeship that sustained them. They were all to one another now. Yet enraptured as they were with their love, they were never able to forget that they were proscribed. This glimpse of happiness could only be a transient thing. Any day, at any hour, Gervase was likely to fall into the hands of his enemies. But whenever that dread accident befell them, as sooner or later it must, they had made their pledge that they would die together.
Was there no way of ultimate escape? Each day that passed had seemed to minister to their love of life. As they lay in the grass, gazing afar into a heaven so gorgeous that it filled them with wonder, this longing to live took hold of them both with a still greater intensity. Was there no way by which an entirely innocent man could escape the scaffold?
If only they had a little money to buy a passage on board ship they might hope to escape across the seas. Instead of wandering aimlessly from place to place, void of purpose or design, there was no reason why they should not make for the coast. Unhappily it was likely to profit them little when they came there unless they could provide themselves with some money.
The whole of Gervase’s property had passed into the hands of the wicked man who had borne false testimony against him. This man was his uncle, Simon Heriot, who had succeeded to his personal effects and his estate in the west of England. These had been confiscated by the Crown. And in that age it was customary to bestow the spoils of successful prosecution upon the person or persons who had procured the conviction of the offender!
Gervase knew that he was the victim of a very wicked conspiracy. Simon Heriot, cunning, covetous, unspeakably vile, had laid his plans only too well. So deftly woven the plot, so wisely chosen its instruments and so skilful their use of forged proofs and false evidence that from the first the unlucky Gervase had had little chance of escape.
He had been caught securely in a trap. The charges had been laid against him with such diabolical skill that it was almost impossible to disprove them. It was in vain that he had cast himself upon the mercy of the Queen. Simon Heriot, ignoble as he was at heart, was a person of some place, and not without consideration at Court; and he had always been able to mask his cunning well enough to pass for a high-minded and honorable man.