“My leg,” whined Tabbard, “is badly knocked. You must help me to the wine room of the Windmill across the way.”
“I can do that much for you,” returned the constable, taking his arm, and across the uneven street, not yet lighted by the watchmen’s lanterns, nor disturbed by the bellman’s drowsy tinkling, the scheming Tabbard proceeded with his prospective comrade for an evening’s carousal. Meanwhile the man left at the Dolphin tavern, settled his bill, mounted his horse and was riding down Bishopsgate Street toward London Bridge.
THE DRAWN SWORD.
Therefore sheath, your sword;
If you love me no quarrels in my house.
* * * * *
Here must no speeches pass, no swords be drawn.
—Jew of Malta, ii, 3.
Gentle Mercutio, put thy rapier up.
* * * * *
Beat down their weapons.—Gentlemen, for shame,
Forbear this outrage:
—Romeo and Juliet, iii, 1.
The plague, which thinned the population of London in 1593, was not wholly confined to the city and its suburbs. Several of the villages lying adjacent had been unable to bar its visitation. Travelers on foot, on horse, or by boat upon the Thames, had aided in spreading the germs. At the village of Deptford, situate three and a half miles from London Bridge, cases had increased so that a quarantine had, as early as June the first, been established against all boats approaching the city side. It was not so easy to delay travel along the public roads, and as yet the town lay open for another visitation should the cases already within its limits be suppressed.
Two wayfarers had been struck down before the Golden Hind that day. Dodsman, the landlord of this Deptford tavern, had allowed them to be carried around to the stables, and left there to die, which they did before night; and then, because of fear of infection, he had discharged his two servants who had attended them. It was a duty that he owed to the traveling public, so he asserted, and there seemed weight in the assertion. It is to be supposed that any case within the tavern walls would also have vitally affected his interests; for he knew not whether the legal obligation to mark a red cross on the outer door, with the text under it of “Lord have mercy upon us” was strictly confined to the limits of London. As it was, this double death-stroke had carried consternation into the crowd of refugees who, fleeing this far, had complacently halted for the epidemic to die out. If they did not depart on the morrow, it would be because they trusted more to tavern walls than to the open road.
On this particular night, being the night of the day on which our narrative begins, the tavern doors were closed. Only storms had heretofore kept them from being open until midnight at least. There was no reason to believe that death might not just as easily enter through the keyholes as through open portals, and throttle one at the fireside; but closed quarters seemed to assure safety. Dodsman, at least, felt no fear when thus shut within his tap-room; and his constant rule was to interpret other people’s feelings by the state of his own when in like situations.
With his fat hands resting on the thick sill of a window, he stood looking out into the uninviting night. The diamond-shaped panes of variegated colors were not the clearest material to look through, but they were transparent enough for him to see that the lantern hanging from the arm of the high sign post at the tavern’s front was lighted. The rays of this signal light had sufficient penetration to reveal the wooden figure of a gilded deer, of life size, mounted upon the sign post, and any belated traveler upon the fog-wrapped road could by these rays alone have seen the red-painted facade of the building, its bulging upper windows and the pedimented entrance.