ALAS! a large cup of sack did little to sharpen the remembrance of Mr. William Shakespeare. It was in vain that he brought his mind to bear upon the problem that now engaged it. He felt sure he had seen both the gypsies before, and in very different circumstances; slight threads of recollection were alive in his memory, but for the life of him he could not piece them together into any hopeful clue.
The playwright spent the rest of the morning on a bench in the sun before the door of the Crown, conning diligently the close-written sheets of the latest heir of his invention.
Art is long, time fleeting. He read with mingled feelings: relief that the thing was done at last; regret of the true artist that it was not to be done all over again, so far it was from those first blithe runnings of the fancy which had peopled his mind with such glad shapes as no eye of mortal could ever look upon. Even now it wanted a title, this pleasant conceited comedy. And how was it possible to find a name for this absurd, sweetly foolish fantasy of the greenwood and a banished duke, of love and girlhood and high poesy?
Art is long, time fleeting. It was a poor thing, but it would have to serve, since the Queen had called for it to be played before her next Thursday se’nnight in her palace at Richmond. And it made the playwright sigh to think that there was only young Parflete to play Rosalind, that fair emblem of victorious girlhood, upon which he had feasted and quickened his imagination. The prosperity of the play depended on a single character, and Parflete, with all his grace and talent, came not near the poet’s ideal of the part. Perhaps no mortal youth could ever hope to do that, and yet what a glorious Rosalind had walked up that street but an hour ago!
It was a stroke of perverse fate that his eyes had been ravished by that charming gypsy boy. But for that sight, Parflete, for whom the part had been designed from the first, would have contented him. But now having seen the true Rosalind, for all that he was so fine-drawn and shy, so ill-kempt and rustical, it made the poet sad to think of Parflete in the rôle, youth of breeding and talent as he was.
The playwright sighed heavily as he turned the last page. Alas! he felt already that he had leaned too heavily on his chief female character. Oh, if—! But such a speculation was idle ... he must dismiss it. Let him spend his mind more profitably in seeking a name for the plaguy piece. But how was it possible to find a name for such a patched coat of fantasy?
While William Shakespeare was in this mental travail, his friend Richard Burbage came out of the tavern. “Dick,” said he, “of your charity give me a name for this curst piece. I know no more what to christen it than does a blind tinker his dog.”
Richard Burbage removed from his mouth his pipe of tobacco, a fashionable action which seemed to call for a slight air of magniloqence. “A name, my William, for the curst piece?” The tragedian shrugged his shoulders and spread his hands nonchalantly, while the light of a large good-humor shone in his shrewd face. “Oh, call it as you like it or what you will.”
The fist of the playwright descended upon the bench in front of him. “Dick, you’ve hit it at the first shot!” he cried. “As You Like It!—you’ve hit the target right in the middle.”
“Why take two bites at a cherry, my son?” said the tragedian, with another amused shrug. “In fact, the matter merely amounts to this: If William Shakespeare of Stratford-on-Avon in Warwickshire, would engage one Richard Burbage, an honest good fellow, to write his plaguy pieces for him, it would save him a vast deal of trouble and inconvenience and the world would never be able to tell the difference.”
Thereupon Mr. Richard Burbage sauntered back into the Crown Tavern with that large air of benevolent tolerance which should be the attitude of a superior mind toward all men and all things.
“As You Like It,” said the playwright. “The name is as good as a better, confound me if it is not!”
He dipped his quill into the horn of ink that was on the bench beside him, and, with the never-failing instinct of the true craftsman, wrote the title on the first page of his new comedy.
Scarce had he time to do this, however, when that swift, alert and curious mind was engaged by an entirely new affair. There was the sound of a horse’s hoofs on the cobbles leading to the tavern door. And the playwright’s quick uplooking glance was met by the sight of a singular traveler.
The newcomer was a man about twenty-five years old, riding a useful-looking horse. But that which particularly drew the notice of William Shakespeare was the hapless plight of man and beast. Both were greatly distressed. The horse had evidently traveled far and swiftly: it was caked with mud up to its withers; it was lame of a foreleg; it was covered with sweat, and seemed hardly able to do another yard.
The case of the rider was in keeping with the horse’s unhappy state. The man looked so limp and wretched that he could scarce sit in the saddle. Moreover, he was wild-eyed and haggard; and his leather riding-suit which seemed to denote a servant of a superior sort was in sad disorder.
The man rode into the courtyard of the inn and handed over his weary horse to an ostler. Then the rider, no less weary than his steed, staggered painfully to the inn door. In a hoarse voice he called for a tankard of ale and then flung himself heavily on the bench near to where the player sat.
Shakespeare eyed the traveler with deep curiosity. The man was in such a sorry plight that he could not refrain from pitying him. “You appear to have traveled far, friend,” he said.
The man looked at the speaker in a manner to suggest that he might be strongly averse from the delights of promiscuous conversation with a total stranger. “Yes, I have traveled far,” he said, with a weary sigh.
He buried his head in his hands as if he were in despair. And even after refreshment had been brought to him he did not heed it, but continued in this attitude for some little time. Then suddenly he shook off his lethargy and drank the ale. Feeling a little renewed, he called for a second tankard.
“You don’t happen to have seen a couple o’ young gypsies traveling through Oxford?” he asked suddenly.
Immediately the player grew very alert. “What kind of gypsies do you mean?” he asked in a casual but wary tone.
“The taller of the two might be playing on the flute, I reckon, and the younger one, who has the voice and look of a girl, might doubtless be singing.”
William Shakespeare, as became a thoroughgoing man of the world, was far too acute to blurt out on the spur of the moment the full measure of his information. Rather he preferred to parry the question of this singular traveler by putting a few of his own. “What might you be wanting with them?” he asked cautiously.
The traveler drank copiously of his second pot of ale before he answered. And when answer he did it was in the rather surly manner of one who strongly desires to keep his own counsel and yet is not well enough trained in the art of politeness to be able to keep it gracefully. “That’s my affair,” he said bluntly.
The player was too wise a man to pursue his inquiry at the moment. But by now his curiosity was fully engaged. There was a mystery here. And mystery of any sort was apt to engage that subtle mind. When he had first set eyes on that picturesque pair of young vagabonds he had been strongly inclined to believe that they were other than they seemed. Now this man’s coming, his agitation and his secrecy confirmed him in that theory.
Clearly there was a good deal more in this matter than met the eye. The player was convinced that he had seen both these ragged robbins before. And in some vague way he felt he had seen them in circumstances and surroundings wholly different from those in which they were at present.
He knew how to keep his own counsel, however. It was left to the traveler himself to renew the topic. And this the man presently did, and in the manner of one who against his natural judgment is driven by some remorseless, some irresistible force.
“Did you say you had seen a pair o’ gypsies pass along the road?” he asked.
“I say neither that I have nor that I have not,” said the player. “Still, if you care to tell me more it is possible that I may be able to help you. But,” he added, with well-assumed indifference, “after all, it is hardly likely that the persons I have in mind are those whom you are seeking.”
The man hesitated as one impaled on the horns of a dilemma. Evidently he was very loath to tell all he knew. Yet at the same time he realized that the information he sought could only be won by a measure of frankness on his own part. After a careful weighing of the pros and cons of the matter he seemed reluctantly to conclude that his silence might lose him more than it would gain.
“I know not who you are,” he said at last. “But you have a fair-seeming air and the face of an honest man. And God send you are all of what you appear, for it is a very strange and grievous story that I have to tell.”
The traveler spoke in the manner of one who is entirely desperate. He seemed to have been driven to the limit of his mental as well as his physical endurance.
In the face of the player was that beacon of true sympathy which is as a talisman in the sight of all men. He had the power to put himself in the place of others. And here was a kindness, a candor, an openness for all men to read, and reading for all men to trust implicitly.
“My story is one you will find very hard to believe,” said the young man. “But there is no reason why it should not be told. It is in the power of no man to make things in a worse coil than they are. And while I do not think aught is to be gained by making others a party to them, after all it can do no harm, and I may even gain a certain ease of mind.”
The player showed very clearly that he was following every word with the closest and most sympathetic attention.
“To begin at the beginning of my story,” said the young man, “my name is John Markham. My calling is that of a falconer. I have been eight years in the service of Sir John Feversham, who is Constable of Nottingham Castle, and chief justice of the Forest of Sherwood. He has the reputation of being a hard man. But I have always found him a very just one. Moreover I say to you, whoever you be, that no man could desire a better master.
“Well, to come at once to this dreadful story, which it hurts me to tell, some months ago, six perhaps or more—at least it was in the fall of the year—the Queen caused to be imprisoned privily in the Castle a Mr. Gervase Heriot. He was a highly placed young man. But he had mixed with the Papists, and after a trial which had been held in secret before the Court of Star Chamber, he had been found guilty of complicity in the Round House Plot, which you may know had for its object the taking the Queen’s life. By a good providence the plot was discovered in time, but the conspirators were able to fly the country, except Mr. Heriot, who alone was taken.
“Mr. Heriot, as I say, was tried in secret, because the Queen’s advisers were anxious not to inflame the public mind, and they wished as little as possible to be made of so ugly a matter. Mr. Heriot was proved guilty of conspiring against the life of the Queen, and he was committed to the Castle of Nottingham to be held there by Sir John Feversham, my master, until such time as her pleasure concerning him should be further known.
“Some two months ago the Queen signed the warrant for Mr. Heriot’s death. The day for the execution was fixed. And now I come to the strange, the grievous, the incredible part of the story.” In the sudden flood of his emotion the falconer’s voice almost failed. “On the very morning that Mr. Heriot was to die by the ax on the block, within three hours of the time appointed, he escaped from his durance.”
The young man could not go on. But the unspoken sympathy of his auditor nerved him to continue. Yet as he did so a kind of tragic horror entered his voice.
“At first nothing was known of the circumstances of Mr. Heriot’s escape. Yet without loss of time all of us of the Constable’s household who were able of body mounted our horses and rode off in all directions in order that the prisoner might be retaken. And it fell to me as I rode that same morning in the meadows beside the Trent to come upon Mr. Heriot hiding in the grass.”
For a moment the unhappy young man covered his face with his hands. It was as if he was wholly unable to proceed with his story or to contemplate that which was coming.
With an ever-mounting interest William Shakespeare waited in silence for this emotion to pass.
“I had but to speak,” the young man was able to continue at last. “I had but to cry out to my comrades, who were less than fifty yards off, and the prisoner would have been ta’en. But I did not do this.”
Again came a dire threat from an overwrought mind, but with a powerful effort of will the falconer was able to proceed with his story.
“But I did not do this, for beside him in the grass was Mistress Anne Feversham, the daughter of the Constable my master.”
A sharp cry broke from the lips of William Shakespeare. He rose from the bench in the stress of his excitement.
“You let them go free!” said the player.
“Yes,” said the falconer. “I had it not in my heart to take them when she, for whom I would have given my life, had given hers for the man she loved better than her own soul.”
The face of the player was all melted with compassion. His eyes of strange somberness grew fixed and dark.
“But this is not the end of what I have to tell,” said the falconer. “I let Mr. Heriot and my young mistress go free; yet before that day was out the truth came to the Constable my master, that it was his own daughter who had contrived the prisoner’s escape and that she was away with him over the country-side. And my master, being one to whom honor is a jewel, posted at once to the Queen to her palace at Greenwich. With his own lips he told her that Mr. Heriot was broken free. And not a word did he speak of the part his daughter had borne in the affair, but took the whole blame of the matter upon himself.
“They say that when Sir John told the news to the Queen her displeasure was terrible. They say that his story—as in faith it must with the chief part of it left out—carried so little credence to her mind that she at once suspected him of treachery, old and loyal servant as he was. She had him straightway committed to the Tower. He is to stand immediate trial before the Court of the Star Chamber on a charge of aiding and abetting the escape of a prisoner of state. And as I learn from those best able to judge of such a grievous matter, my master, unless the prisoner is retaken at once, will without a doubt be condemned to the block.”
Shakespeare had followed with a growing excitement as strange a story as he had ever heard in his life. There were elements in it which appealed intensely to his dramatic sense. Besides, he did not doubt that two of the chief actors in the tragedy were very close at hand. He did not doubt that they were that fascinating pair of vagabonds who had wrought upon his curiosity so short a time ago.