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.