A Gentleman Player; His Adventures on a Secret Mission for Queen Elizabeth. Robert Neilson Stephens

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СКАЧАТЬ old heart!" cried Kit. "Thou'rt alive, eh? Bones of Mary, I thought thee swallowed up by some black night-walking dragon in Cow Lane this morning!"

      "We were together last night, I think," said Hal, not with positive certainty.

      "Together, i' faith, till by my cursing and hard breathing I killed in mine ears the sound of thy steps, so I could not follow thee. Ah, Hal, there was the foul fiend's hand in the separating of us! For, being alone, and sitting down to rest me in the street, without Newgate, what should happen but I should fall asleep, and my purse be cut ere I waked? Old Kit hath not e'en a piece of metal left, to mimic the sound of coin withal!" Old Kit's look was so blue at this that Hal knew he was truly penniless, though whether the loss of his money had been as he related it, was a question for which Hal had no answer. The captain's eyes were already inclining toward that part of Hal's costume where his money was commonly bestowed.

      "This evil town is plainly too much for thy rustical innocence, Kit," said Hal. "You need a country change. Come with me for a few days. Don't stare. I have private business, and require a man like thee. There's meat, drink, and beds in it, while it lasts; some fighting maybe, and perchance a residue of money when costs are paid. If there be, we shall divide equally. Wilt follow me?"

      "To the other side of the round world, boy! And though old Kit be something of a liar and guzzler, and a little of a cheater and boaster, thou'lt find him as faithful as a dog, and as companionable a rascal as ever lived!"

      "Then take this money, and buy me two horses in Smithfield, all equipped; and meet me with them at two o'clock, in St. John's Street, close without the bar. But first get thyself dinner, and a warm cloak to thy back. Haste, old dog o' war! There will be swift going for us, maybe, ere many suns set!"

      The two left St. Paul's together by the north door. Bottle going on northward toward the Newgate,²³ Hal turning eastward toward St. Helen's, where he would refresh himself with a bath and food, and tell Mr. Shakespeare of news given him by a court scrivener in drunken confidence; of an imperative obligation to go and warn a friend in danger; of money won in dicing; of a willingness to resign his parts to Gil Crowe, and of his intention to rejoin the players at the first opportunity, wherever they might be.

      As he turned out Bishopsgate Street, he thought how clear his way lay before him, and smiled with benignant superiority to his simple task. And then suddenly, causing his smile to fade a little, came back to him the words of the queen, "Allow for the unexpected, young sir, which usually befalleth!"

CHAPTER IV.

       Table of Contents

      THE UNEXPECTED.

      "The affair cries haste.

       And speed must answer it."—Othello.

      At two o'clock that afternoon—it was Tuesday, the third day of March—Master Marryott and Capt. Christopher Bottle rode northward from Smithfield bars, in somewhat different aspect and mood from those in which they had gone through their adventure in the same neighborhood the previous night. They were well mounted; for Kit Bottle was not the man to be gulled by the jinglers of the Smithfield horse-market, and knew, too well for his own good reputation, how to detect every trick by which the jockeys palmed off their jades on buyers who judged only by appearances.

      They were fitly armed, too; for Hal, before rejoining the captain, had procured pistols as reinforcements to his rapier and dagger, and Kit had so far exceeded instructions as to do likewise. The captain as yet knew not what Hal's mission was, and he was too true a soldier to exhibit any curiosity, if he felt any. But there was always a possibility of use for weapons, in travelling in those days; even on the much-frequented road from London to St. Albans ("as common as the way between St. Albans and London," said Poins, of Doll Tearsheet), in which thoroughfare, until he should turn out beyond Barnet. Hal's course lay. It was a highway that, not far out of London, became like all other roads of the time narrow and rutty, often a mere ditch below the level of the fields, woods, or commons, at either side; rarely flanked, as in later times, by hedges, walls, or fences of any kind; passing by fewer houses, and through smaller villages, than it is now easy to imagine its doing.

      On this, as on every English road, most passenger travel was by horseback or afoot, although the great, had their coaches, crude and slow-moving. Most transportation of goods was by pack-horse, the carriers going in numerous company for safety; though huge, lumbering, covered stage-wagons had already appeared on certain chief highways, with a record of something like two miles an hour. The royal post for the bearing of letters was in a primitive and uncertain state. Travelling by post was unknown, in the later sense of the term: such as it was, it was a luxury of the great, who had obvious means of arranging for relays of horses; and of state messengers, who might press horses for the queen's service. When ordinary men were in haste, and needed fresh horses, they might buy them, or trade for them, or hire them from carriers, or from stable-keepers where such existed. But the two animals obtained by Bottle in Smithfield, though neither as shapely nor as small as Spanish jennets, were quite sufficient for the immediate purpose—the bearing of their riders, without stop, to Welwyn.

      Islington and Highgate were passed without incident, and Hal, while soothed in his anxiety to perform his mission without a hitch, began to think again that the business was too easy to be interesting. As a young gentleman of twenty-two who had read "The Faerie Queen" for the romance and not for the allegory, he would have liked some opportunity to play the fighting knight in service of his queen. On Finchley Common he looked well about, half in dread, half in hope; whereupon Captain Bottle, as taking up a subject apropos, began to discourse upon highway robbers. From considering the possibilities of a present encounter with them, he fell to discussing their profession in a business light.

      "An there must be vile laws to ruin gentlemen withal, and hard peace to take the bread out of true soldiers' mouths, beshrew me but bold robbing on the highway is choicer business than a parson's, or a lawyer's, or a lackey's in some great house, or even coney-catching in the taverns! When I was put to it to get my beef and clary one way or another, I stayed in London, thinking to keep up my purse by teaching fence; but 'tis an overcrowded vocation, and the rogues that can chatter the most Italian take all the cream. So old Kit must needs betake himself to a gentlemanly kind of gull-catching, never using the false dice till the true went against him, look you; nor bullying a winner out of the stakes when they could be had peaceably; and always working alone, disdaining to fellow with rascally gangs. But often I have sighed that I did not as Rumney did—he that was mine ancient in the campaigns in Spain and Ireland. When the nation waxed womanish, and would have no more of war, Rumney, for love of the country, took to the highways, and I have heard he hath thrived well about Sherwood forest and toward Yorkshire. 'Twas my choice of a town life hindered me being his captain on the road as I had been in the wars. I hear he calleth himself captain now! Though he puts his head oftener into the noose than I, and runs more risk of sword and pistol, his work is the worthier of a soldier and gentleman for that. Yet I do not call Rumney gentleman, neither! A marvellous scurvy rogue! But no coward. Would that thy business might take us so far as we should fall in with the rascal! I should well like to drink a gallon of sack with the rascally cur, in memory of old times, or to stab him in the paunch for a trick he did me about a woman in the Low Countries!"

      Finchley Common was crossed without threat of danger, the only rogues met being of the swindling, begging, feigning, pilfering order, all promptly recognized and classified by the experienced captain. Nor did Whetston or Barnet or Hatfield, or the intervening country, yield any event, save that a clock struck six, and the day—gray enough at best—was on the wane when they passed through Hatfield. They had made but five miles an hour, the road, though frozen, being uneven and difficult, and Hal assuming that the pursuivant, СКАЧАТЬ