"Tom! What, Tom! Where be the others? I tell thee, Tom, there have been
doings...."
"Is that Dick Burbage?" A frail, thin windle-straw of a man came
coughing across the foggy courtyard with a stable-lantern, holding
it high. Its rays wavered on his own face, which was young but
extraordinarily haggard, and on the piles of timber between and over
which he picked his way--timbers heaped pell-mell in the slush of the
yard or stacked against the boundary wall, some daubed with paint,
others gilded wholly or in part, and twinkling as the lantern swung.
"Dick Burbage already? Has it miscarried, then?"
"Miscarried? What in the world was there to miscarry? I tell thee,
Tom--but where be the others?"
The frail man jerked a thumb at the darkness behind his shoulder. "Hark
to them, back yonder, stacking the beams! Where should they be? and
what doing but at work like galley-slaves, by the pace you have kept us
going? Look around. I tell you from the first 'twas busy-all to get the
yard clear between the wagons' coming, and at the fifth load we gave
it up. My shirt clings like a dish-clout; a chill on this will be the
death o' me. What a plague! How many scoundrels did you hire, that they
take a house to pieces and cart it across Thames faster than we can
unload it?"
"That's the kernel of the story, lad. I hired the two-score rogues
agreed on, neither more nor less: but one descended out of heaven and
raised the number to twelve-score. Ten-score extra, as I am a sinner;
and yet but one man, for I counted him. His name, he told me, was
Legion."
"Dick," said the other sadly, "when a sober man gives way to
drinking--I don't blame you: and your pocket will be the loser more
than all the rest if you've boggled to-night's work; but poor Cuthbert
will take it to heart."
"There was a man, I tell you----"
"Tut, tut, pull yourself together and run back across bridge. Or let me
go: take my arm now, before the others see you. You shall tell me on
the way what's wrong at Shoreditch."
"There is naught wrong with Shoreditch, forby that it has lost a
theatre: and I am not drunk, Tom Nashe--no, not by one-tenth as drunk
as I deserve to be, seeing that the house is down, every stick of it,
and the bells scarce yet tolling midnight. 'Twas all this man, I tell
you!"
"Down? The Theatre down? Oh, go back, Dick Burbage!"
"Level with the ground, I tell you--his site a habitation for the
satyr. _Cecidit, cecidit Babylon illa magna!_ and the last remains of
it, more by token, following close on my heels in six wagons. Hist,
then, my Thomas, my Didymus, my doubting one!--Canst not hear the
rumble of their wheels? and--and--oh, good Lord!" Burbage caught his
friend by the arm and leaned against him heavily. "_He's_ there, and
following!"
The wagons came rolling over the cobbles of the Clink along the roadway
outside the high boundary-wall of the yard: and as they came, clear
above their rumble and the slow clatter of hoofs a voice like a trumpet
declaimed into the night--
"_Above all ryvers thy Ryver hath renowne,
Whose beryall streamys, pleasaunt and preclare,
Under thy lusty wallys renneth downe,
Where many a swan doth swymme with wyngis fair,
Where many a barge doth sail and row with are_----
We had done better--a murrain on their cobbles!--we had done better,
lad, to step around by Paul's Wharf and take boat.... This jolting ill
agrees with a man of my weight....
_Where many a barge doth sail aund row with are_--
Gr-r-r! Did I not warn thee beware, master wagoner, of the kerbstones
at the corners? We had done better by water, what though it be dark....
Lights of Bankside on the water ... no such sight in Europe, they
tell me.... My Lord of Surrey took boat one night from Westminster
and fired into their windows with a stone-bow, breaking much glass
... drove all the long-shore queans screaming into the streets in
their night-rails.... He went to the Fleet for it ... a Privy Council
matter.... I forgive the lad, for my part: for only think of it--all
those windows aflame on the river, and no such river in Europe!--
_Where many a barge doth sail and row with are;
Where many a ship doth rest with top-royall.
O towne of townes! patrone and not compare,
London, thou art the flow'r of Cities all!_