HARDLY had this thing come to pass, when a number of startled faces appeared on the outer side of the shutterless window. Shaking and rattling did not serve to force an entrance, but by the time the combined pressure of four or five vigorous and determined men had been applied, the framework began to yield. Very soon they had made their way into the room.
Simon Heriot was dead.
One glance at the horrible distorted face was enough to tell Gervase Heriot what had occurred. There was no need for the young man to get down on his knees, candle in hand, and loosen the man’s clothing. Simon Heriot had already breathed his last.
The men who had come with Gervase into the room belonged one and all to the Lord Chamberlain’s Company. The first of these was William Shakespeare whose fantastically ingenious device had been fraught with such tragic consequences. It had succeeded beyond hope or expectation. Richard Burbage’s had been the voice which had re-echoed down the wide chimney with such ghastly effect.
“Dead?” said the playwright, looking round at the circle of astonished and half-terrified faces. And then he said, with a passionate solemnity, with a look of terror in his own dark-glowing eyes, “God rest his soul. His crime was black, but he has paid for it with usury. God rest his unhappy soul.”
A chill of silence fell upon all who had entered the room. In a sense, they had done this man to death, and perhaps that thought was even more potent in their minds than the grim and awful tragedy they had witnessed.
After a while, the spell was broken. Burbage picked up the paper that had fallen to the floor. He examined it by the ghostly light of the candles, and then handed it to the man who had caused it to be written.
It might have been supposed that the text would have been expressed in a handwriting barely decipherable, but such was not the case. The writing was sufficiently clear to bear no reasonable doubt of its authenticity. By a process of hypnotic suggestion the man’s mind had been strung up to a point beyond its natural powers, and it had not given way until the last word had been written.
Shakespeare folded up the paper and put it in his pocket.
“I will bear this to the Queen myself,” he said.
In the meantime, some of the others had raised the body of Simon Heriot from the ground and had laid it on a table. But Shakespeare bore no part in all this. It was not that he was callous; it was simply that the sight of death revolted him.
After the body had been placed on the table, one and all waited upon the word of the leader of the enterprise, who had devised all that had come to pass. But now his power seemed to have gone from him. Having done so much more than he had meant to do, he was as one overborne by the sense of his deed. He now confronted his fellow-players haplessly, apparently not knowing what to do next or what advice to give.
As it happened, however, all further decision was taken out of his hands. While one and all stood awaiting that masterful initiative that was no longer at their service, the door of the room was opened very stealthily, and two of the dead man’s servants entered. Each carried a candle and a fowling-piece.
Both men were evidently in deadly fear of their lives, but a sense of duty had prevailed with them over a desire for personal safety.
“How, now, you masterless rogues,” said one, who was the butler, in a voice by no means valiant. “What do you here?”
Before it was possible to answer the question, the antiquated weapon he carried went off with a loud report, which seemed to make the room rock to its foundations, and half choked all those in it with the fumes of smoke and gunpowder. It was the result of accident, certainly not of design, but a cry arose from among the players.
“Oh, God!”
It was the voice of the young man Parflete.
“Put up your weapons, you fools,” cried Gervase.
The unlucky Parflete had fallen against the table. Anxiously they crowded round the man who had been hit, while the butler and the old serving man who was with him, seeing their master’s nephew of the company, laid down their weapons.
The young actor had been hit in the arm. It hung helpless and bloody by his side. Suddenly he fainted, and Gervase had only just time enough to catch him in his arms.
William Kemp, the famous comedian and creator of the rôle of Falstaff, who was one of those who had borne a part in this tragic conspiracy, had the presence of mind to seize a horn of brandy that was on the table. Having first, by a free application to his own throat, been able to satisfy himself that the liquor was capable of stimulating the heart’s action, he poured a goodly portion of it down the throat of his wounded comrade.
There was virtue in this remedy. But the unlucky young player lay shivering with pain in the arms of Gervase, while Burbage attended an ugly wound with considerable skill.
First he cut away the dripping sleeve of the doublet with his clasped knife. Then a basin of water was brought and he bathed the wound, and finally bound up the arm tightly in a clean handkerchief. But by the time this had been done, Parflete was again insensible.
In the meantime, the two servants had discovered that their master was dead. And the horror of that discovery was increased by the presence of his nephew, whom they had presumed to be dead also. Furthermore, they were not acquainted with the black part their master had played. Thus their grief and horror were perfectly sincere.
The arrival of what certainly appeared to be a lawless company of lawless and masterless men, had plunged already the entire household into a state of alarm. The cries and the noise of firearms had at once aroused the rest of the indoor servants. In a few minutes, these had come crowding into the room. And as soon as they had learned what had occurred, matters began to take an ugly shape.
The steward of Simon Heriot, who had now appeared on the scene, was a man of resolute character. He declared that he would hold in custody those who had been responsible for his master’s death, notwithstanding that one among them was his master’s nephew. Accordingly, he sent one man to call the outdoor servants; he sent another to procure a horse from the stables and ride with all haste to the nearest justice; also he proclaimed the fact that he would suffer no man to escape.
In that, perhaps, although his intention was excellent, he was not wise. The players, including Gervase and the falconer, mustered nine men in all, against seven men and four women. To be sure, one of the intruders was sorely disabled and would require the careful tendance of his friends if he was to be brought securely away. But, in the matter of arms, the advantage was with the players, inasmuch that most of them were provided with swords, and they had only to fear one undischarged fowling-piece and divers staves and short daggers.
Gervase now took command of affairs. He approached his uncle’s steward coolly enough, for all that the man preserved a very threatening attitude with his weapon pointed ominously at the players.
“Put it up, you curst fool!” said Gervase, roundly. “Haven’t you done mischief enough already?”
“Not half the mischief you have done, sir,” said the man. “Come not an inch nearer or I——”
Before the steward could complete his threat or carry it into effect, Gervase suddenly struck up his arm. The piece went off with a tremendous report. This time, happily, its contents were discharged into the air.
In the midst of the smoke and the general confusion, Gervase flung himself upon the steward and, with the strength and the address of youth, soon wrenched the clumsy weapon from his hands. Then, with a blow on the head from the butt of the weapon, he laid the man insensible.
“Through the window, my friends,” he cried to his comrades. “Let us get out of this while we have the chance.”
Gervase had now become the leader of the players—for a time at least. Already he had shown that faculty of quick initiative which belongs to the man of action. The others obeyed him instinctively. His swift decision, and the manner in which his deed leaped with his thought, showed them clearly enough that they would do well to follow him.
Burbage was first through the window. He was a powerful and active man. He lifted out Parflete bodily and then, hoisting him on his broad shoulders, began to run with him in the direction of the horses which were tethered in the lane. It was well that the wounded actor was very light of weight.
Meanwhile, the others were rendering a pretty good account of themselves. A general mêlée had ensued, in which blows were given freely and given as freely again. And in all this, Gervase was foremost. Many shrewd knocks he delivered with the butt of his weapon, and one of these undoubtedly saved Shakespeare a broken head. John Markham, the falconer, also did considerable execution with the flat of his short sword.
The onfall of the players had been so swift as to take Simon Heriot’s servants by surprise. And, after all, the resistance they had to offer was not very stout. Thus those who had forced so irregular an entry were soon in excellent shape for making good their escape by way of the window through which they had come.
The breach in the casement their entrance had caused was a large one. And with far less difficulty than they had reason to expect were they able to withdraw from the room. Also, they suffered no further casualty beyond a few ill-directed blows that did them little hurt.
The dead man’s servants were less fortunate. Several were laid low, although none of their injuries was serious. But these early mishaps had killed any desire that might have lurked in the others to press the conflict beyond the point of discretion. No very serious effort was made to impede the flight of Gervase Heriot and his friends, whom one and all of the dead man’s household honestly believed had done his uncle to death.
It was not a difficult matter for the players to reach their horses which had been left in the lane. Shakespeare, who was a good horseman, and who had contrived to be well mounted, had the wounded man lifted on to the front of his saddle.
Parflete was still very weak from loss of blood and the shock of his wound. He was quite unable to take care of himself. But the playwright was full of solicitude for the young man. Also it was fortunate that they both rode light. Shakespeare, although well knit of figure, was hardly more than a ten stone man.
The horses were soon untethered and their heads turned in the direction of Oxford. No time was lost in making for the Crown. It was most likely there would be the devil to pay for that evening’s tragic work. The law would certainly be invoked against them; indeed, already it was in process of being summoned. As far as the players themselves were concerned, their chief hope was that none save Gervase Heriot had been recognized. If that happened to be the case, and the young man could lie perdu for a few days, the hue and cry might pass, always provided that no evidence was forthcoming against the members of the Lord Chamberlain’s Company.
Not a word was spoken as they rode to the Crown. The minds of all were filled with a sense of vague horror. The sinister trick they had put upon a blood-guilty man had turned to a grim tragedy. Full many a grisly scene had these men enacted in the process of their calling. Full many a scene of pity and terror had the master mind among them devised. But never in all their play-acting had they approached the sheer horror of the human soul which had been tormented so ruthlessly that night.
It was in vain they reflected that even with his callous crime heavy upon him they had not meant to do the man to death. The world was undoubtedly a better place for his quittance; it was necessary that his soul should be wrung to its extremity if an innocent man was to escape the ax; but let them urge in extenuation all that was possible, and there was still not one among them who would ever forget the dreadful thing with which he had been face to face that night.
As they rode along the moonless lanes in the stifling silence of a midsummer night, the weird shapes of the trees far spreading in their heavy leafage seemed to affront their eyes with phantom shapes. The eerie darkness that lay like a pall on the fields and woods and the grim sentinel hedgerows oppressed them almost beyond endurance.
Never once did they ease the pace of their horses, not even to listen for sounds of pursuit. And to more than one among that band of conspirators, perhaps most of all to the mind of William Shakespeare, it was a real, an unspeakable relief when a sudden bend in the dark road showed two or three fugitive lights twinkling a little ahead where Oxford lay.
Luckily, it was not a difficult matter to get through the city gate. Still, it was necessary to knock up the porter, who rose from his couch in no civil mood and asked why virtuous men rode so late. But a gold angel that was thrown to him reassured him wonderfully.
They came into the city unmolested. And thus far there was never a sign of pursuit. But they had a deep sense of relief when, at last, they turned round by the Cornmarket and alighted under the oil lamp that had been kept burning for them before the door of John Davenant’s hostelry.