Weep, heavens, and vanish into liquid tears!
Fall, stars that govern his nativity,
And summon all the shining lamps of heaven
To cast their bootless fires to the earth.
—II Tamburlaine, v, 3.
Hung be the heavens with black, yield day to night!
Comets, importing change of times and states,
Brandish your crystal tresses in the sky,
And with them scourge the bad, revolting stars.
—First Part Henry VI, i, 1.
When Gyves, the constable, slunk away from the portico of the Windmill Tavern, where he had been exhausting his patience on protracted watch, his face was the composite picture of all the hopeless wretches whom he had arrested during his long term of office. He had waited for Tabbard, and—he had seen him. It was evident that no demand upon the latter could be responded to. What was he to do? To be without the warrant meant the loss of his office and perhaps heavy fine or severe punishment. It might be that the contents of Tabbard’s pockets had been removed before the body was taken from the tavern; but this was not likely. Every one feared contagion; and the dead, from plague, were not usually disturbed more than was necessary to move them to the death cart. A ray of hope scattered some of the gloom on his countenance, and the breaking light of the morning revealed it. He determined to follow the cart, which was already passing down the Old Jewry. He started upon this spur, and at the corner of the Poultry overtook the cart, which, turning west, entered Cheapside. Gyves kept at a distance of thirty feet from the object that he followed, either to avoid raising suspicions of evil on the part of the living occupants of the cart, or to avoid close proximity to the victims of the plague.
The morning light was now strong enough for Gyves to see that the cart was only half full of bodies. His apprehension, that frequent halts would ensue before they reached the potters’ field, soon proved to be in part well founded. The first one occurred near the mouth of a side street or lane. Gloomy looking buildings stood at the corners, and close behind each, facing on the lane, were rows of small, miserable cottages. Despite the ordinance prohibiting the building of houses of frail and perishable material, these structures had been raised with fronts of wood and roofs of reeds. They were all of one story and arose from the edge of the muddy walk—low walls of upright planks, broken by narrow windows and spaces between doorposts. The reeds of the roofs never flourished in a locality more suitable for their rank growth than the lane below. It was deep with mud and water. Lights shone from some of the windows, but so faintly that the still dull glimmer of the morning seemed to mock the poverty of their rays. On several of the doors red crosses were printed, and two watchmen were pacing to and fro before them, to see that these marked doors were kept closed except for the purpose of passing out the corpse of an inmate.
Sounds of lamentation came from the lane. These were somewhat smothered by the thin walls which only added to their mournfulness. The cart turned into the lane, and Gyves heard one of the watchmen say:
“Always late. Ten minutes more an’ it’ll be sun up, and we wouldn’t dare to pass another corpse to the cart. Why don’t you start earlier?”
“Always growling,” returned the driver. “How many are here?”
“Six,” answered the watchman.
“It’s growing worse.”
“Yes; only two yesterday morning.”