“‘Appoint him,’ she said to Raleigh, ‘where you will. The spurs are yet to be won by the defence.’”
Marlowe paused, his story finished. “And thus, you see,” he added, as Vytal made no rejoinder, “I was right in saying that more than one fair face had hazarded your welfare.”
“No, you were wrong.”
The poet’s dark eyes opened wide with a query, but he said nothing in words, for the feeling of pique had already passed with his airy rebellion against the other’s trenchant monosyllables.
“The face in court,” avowed Vytal, as though half to himself, “and the face in the Southwark Gateway, belong to one and the same woman. I ask you outright wherefore you met me not at the ‘Tabard Inn’? Whither went the maid?”
“Now there,” replied Marlowe, his eyes cast down, “I must play the silent part. In truth, I know not.”
“Know not?”
“Nay, for when we had come safely from the porter’s lodge, she demanded that I should take her to a barge, that she might go thereby to London. We had no more than set foot within the boat, and I was questioning her as to the directions I should give the waterman, when another wherry came beside us, seemingly just arrived from across the river, and a man in that, scrutinizing us, slowly spoke to her. Then, thanking me, and bidding me thank you for that which she said was beyond all payment, she entered the wherry with the other, and was quickly conveyed toward London.”
For several minutes Vytal was silent; then at last he asked, quietly, “Did the man call her by name?”
“By the name of Eleanor.”