It Was Marlowe: A Story of the Secret of Three Centuries

by Wilbur Gleason Zeigler

In the meantime, the other man assailed, tugging at the hilt of his own sword which was kept from handy withdrawal by the folds of his cloak, retreated backward into the middle of the street. Approaching him was the robber who had delivered the first ineffectual blow. In the tussle he had dropped his bludgeon, and he was now trusting to his own strength to overpower this man before him. Suddenly another sword was out of its scabbard. There was a quick thrust at the dark body between outstretched hands which had almost grasped the swordsman’s neck. A groan escaped from agonized lips, and the wielder of the sword felt warm blood upon his sword hand. His victim had fallen heavily against him, but he pushed him off like so much dead weight, and at that moment he heard his friend’s voice:

“Run, Kit, for thy life!”

“I am with you,” came the answer.

He saw that two other shadows had joined the decimated group. These two had been drowsing on the portico, and at length, aroused by the cries, had come forth. He saw his companion turn and run, and he followed him.

The lights of the windmill tavern streamed across the way, for its doors were open. They reached the fronting pillars of its portico, as though a haven, and then paused. Both of them knew that they could not venture in, and fortunately their assailants had given up the chase.

In the gloom, behind one of the columns, they stood panting. Near them stood a man also in the shadows. Their swift approach had been observed by him; but if he had apprehended the cause, it had not shaken him from his intent to remain concealed. He might have heard the retreating footsteps of their now baffled pursuers, and this should have disturbed him; for the cause of the men who had almost brushed against him was his cause. It was his duty to pursue the assailants; but there are times when the public weal is forgotten—blotted out by thoughts of one’s private welfare. And so it was with the man in the darkness of the portico. The continuance of his ability to act for the public, nay, possibly his existence, depended on different service than the arrest of midnight marauders.

This man was Gyves, the constable, and he was waiting to see Bame leave the tavern so that he might venture in, find Tabbard, and obtain by persuasion or violence the warrant for the arrest of Marlowe. He had waited there for hours, through the mist which had drifted across the portico, and then later, while the drizzling rain had beaten in his face and set him shivering. He had yet no knowledge of the destruction of the writ, and no whisper of the sudden visit of the plague had touched his ears. So it was that the paper, upon which he dreamed his welfare hung, and the man whom he had for the past eight hours yearned most to see, were both beyond power of production to him. But despite all this, the arrest of Marlowe, which was his ultimate object, required at that moment neither the departure of Bame nor his possession of the writ. And furthermore no long weary walk nor tiresome search in an unfamiliar quarter would have been necessary. He could have reached out his hand and have arrested the two men under the neighboring column for a disturbance of the peace. Even then a sword was being sheathed by one of them, and Gyves had heard the late outcry which of itself was sufficient to have justified him in taking them into custody to await further investigation. One of the men was Christopher Marlowe.

To us, with our limited vision, what a comedy is life. Over what scenes of merriment could we not amuse ourselves were we robbed of hearts and consciences and there were added to our remaining faculties the power of unlimited sight alone; to see the struggles of one during a whole life for a result which required only a few days’ effort along another line than that pursued; to see the entanglement, in a single web, of many with worthy designs, and their struggles liberating only that one who as it appeared to us should have remained entangled; to see the life pursuit for a will-o’-the-wisp; to see genius strangled, and dullness triumphant. Perhaps the truth would then burst upon us, that we are but the pawns and knights of the chess-board, moved by an Omniscient hand toward the final victory of the whole.

As the three men held back in the shadows, three more men came forth from the portals of the tavern; but only two of them walked. The third was between the others, but instead of being like them, erect, he was in a horizontal position. He lay upon a stretcher which the two men bore. He was motionless, and a rough cloth covered his form.

Certain it was that the covering of the man upon the stretcher should have concealed his face, but through some inadvertency it had rolled down upon his breast so that his face was revealed. It was expressionless and that of one from whom the soul had fled. A man with flaming torch now ran out of the doors, as though to lead the way, and as the light struck upon the form upon the stretcher, one of the two men who had escaped the murderous, bludgeons of the thieves, clutched his companion’s arm and gasped: