[CHAPTER XIII.]
A RIOT IN CHEAPSIDE.
"Down with them! Cry clubs for prentices!"
—The Shoemaker's Holiday.
Wan and tremulous, after a night of half-sleep varied by ominous dreams, Master Holyday was led by the captain, in the early morning, to the wharf where was to be found the waterman whom Ravenshaw knew he could trust. The scholar attended in a kind of dumb trance to the interview between Ravenshaw and the boatman, who was a powerful, leather-faced fellow, one that listened intently, scrutinised keenly, and expressed himself in quick nods and short grunts. Even the unwonted sight of gold in the captain's hands did not stir the unhappy poet to more than a transient look of faint wonder.
Ravenshaw pulled him by the sleeve to a cook's shop in Thames Street, but the wretched graduate had difficulty in gulping down his food, and scarce could have told whether it was hot pork pie or cold pease porridge. It went differently with the ale which the captain caused to be set before them afterward. Holyday poured this down his throat with feverish avidity, and pushed forth his pot for more. At last Ravenshaw, considering it time for the goldsmith's family to be up, grasped his companion firmly by the crook of the arm, and said, curtly:
"Come!"
The poor scholar, limp and sinking, turned gray in the face, and went forth with the look of a prisoner dragged to execution. The captain had to exert force to keep him from lagging behind, as the two went northward through Bread Street. They stopped once, to buy a cheap sword, scabbard, and hanger; which Holyday dreamily suffered the shopman to attach to his girdle. Nearing Cheapside, the doomed bachelor hung back more and more, and when finally they turned into that thoroughfare, his face all terror, he suddenly jerked from Ravenshaw's hold, and made a bolt toward Cornhill.
But the captain, giving chase, caught him by the collar, in front of Bow church, seized his neck as in a vice, turned him about toward the goldsmith's house, took a tighter hold of his arm, and impelled him relentlessly forward. From his affrighted eyes, ashen cheeks, and dragging gait, people in the street supposed he was being taken to Newgate prison by a queen's officer.
"Now, look you," said the captain, with grim earnestness, as they approached Master Etheridge's shop, "I durst not go too near the place. I shall leave you in a moment; but I shall go over the way, and take my post behind the cross, where I can watch the house in safety. Mark this: my hand shall be upon my sword-hilt, and if you try flight, or come forth unsuccessful, you shall find yourself as dead a poet as Virgil—what though I swing for you, I care not! Come forth not later than the stroke of eleven; walk toward the Poultry, and I will join you. Keep me not waiting, or, by this hand—Go; and remember!"
He gave the scholar a parting push, and strode across the street; a few seconds later he was peering around the corner of the cross, and Master Holyday was lurching into the goldsmith's shop.