William Shakespeare as he lived Part 67

inquired Clara.

"Nothing save that some of his companions of the expedition are with him. The Queen, I find, by another packet," said Lady Leicester, "is much blamed for permitting this expedition to be undertaken at all since it has thus failed. Nay, she hath been rated by Burleigh. The royal lioness is, therefore, chafed in spirit."

"Ah! and here is another letter," continued the Countess, as she perused a somewhat curious doc.u.ment, as curiously worded, and after a fashion not uncommon at a period when, "in speaking of dangerous majesty," it was necessary to be guarded. The letter was brief and secret, partly in figures, and the Countess read it aloud to her friend:

"Let not 1500[27] gain sight of 1000 till anger subdueth, or the hot blood of 1000 will chafe at what may peradventure follow; 1500 is wrathful, and the enemies of 1000 have worked during absence; keep, therefore, valour and worth employed till matters cool. Not only hath the disobedience of 1000 offended in the expedition, but 1500 hath seen a printed volume[28] of _t--t's_, t.i.tle to _a--a_, a device, doubtless, of some crafty knave and enemy; 50 hath been committed this day to the tower."

[Footnote 27: Elizabeth was expressed in those letters by the figures 1500; Ess.e.x by 1000; _a--a_ was the crown.]

[Footnote 28: A seditious Catholic publication, dedicated to Ess.e.x, to ruin him.]

"I understand it not," said Clara. "Albeit it is plain enough to the eye, the sense is mysterious."

"It speaks to me of danger to my gallant son," said the Countess with a sigh, "and is from a dear and true industrious friend. It means that the Queen is angry with my son, and we must, therefore, hold him here if possible. You must aid me in this Clara, and we must endeavour to make Kenilworth a pleasing prison to him for a brief s.p.a.ce."

"Thou knowest," said Clara, "that I am thy guest under promise of strict incognito; thou knowest, dear Lettice, that I am strict in my resolve to remain unknown."

"I know thou art proud in spirit, Clara, as becomes one of the princely line of Plantagenet. But 'tis a mother who asks thee to aid her in keeping her darling son from danger. Heaven knows I have little heart for revelling just now, but something we must invent to detain Ess.e.x at Kenilworth till the danger blows over."

CHAPTER LX.

THE RETURN.

Our readers must now again look upon the town of Stratford, whilst the bright mid-day sun shines upon its roof and chimneys, mid glitters like innumerable diamonds upon its mult.i.tudinous windows.

With one of those sudden changes so common to our climate, the damp weather has cleared up, and turned to frost. The air is light and cheerful, and a h.o.a.ry tinge is given to all around.

How sweetly rural are the quiet old towns of England, as the approaching winter begins to give us that cozy antic.i.p.ation of the comforts and fire-side enjoyments to come with the snow and the bracing blast.

In Elizabeth's day, when the season was fraught with games and revels, each house in the quaint-looking street seemed to promise its hospitality. The citizens' wives, as they bustled through the street, appeared to experience this feeling. The native burghers seemed to accost each other with a more cordial greeting. The change, even in the open country, albeit it is sterile, and the "one red leaf" is all that dances on the tall tree, is so seasonable, that it is grateful. The human mortals love the coming winter. Its change seems to freshen up all around. Even the old crone, shivering in the ingle neuk, looks with a renewed feeling of pleasure upon the frosted pane, and listens to the sound of the wind without with a kind of enjoyable feeling as she turns her eye again upon the bright hearth-log. Its very crackle seems to chirp of Christmas festivities--"to tell of youthful prime," and those departed days of l.u.s.ty bachelorship and maiden coyness, with all the romps and revels of the time. And then, with the changeful current of thought, as remembrance dwells upon the many departed, amidst the many known,--then comes the more sombre picture, the superst.i.tions of the old age, the sheeted ghost, the evil genius, the witch, and the thrice-told tale of Gramarie--those cherished remembrances of the hallowed period

"Wherein the Saviour's birth was celebrated."

Stratford, so picturesque in its old-world look, so peculiarly English, is just now putting on its winter garb.

A couple of days subsequent to that on which Captain Fluellyn arrived at Clopton, whilst the inhabitants progressed the streets, they seemed once more filled with the import of recent news. Rumour, in the absence of all a.s.sured information, with all its exaggeration of circ.u.mstance, was afloat amongst them. The great difficulty amidst the variety of information was to gain the real story which had arrived. Grasp, who had suddenly returned, had brought it; but then Grasp, who was hardly to be believed on his oath, had shut himself up the moment he arrived, and would see no one. Certain, however, it was (for everybody said it) that another desperate attempt had been made upon the life of the Queen. By some it was reported she had been stabbed; by others that she had been shot. Master Doubletongue went so far as to say that she was both dead and buried! But as such surmise amounted to treason, he was ordered by the head-bailiff to go about and deny all he had a.s.serted, the drummer of the town being sent round with him, in order that he might proclaim himself a liar at every corner.

Those of our readers who have an eye for the picturesque can, we dare say, imagine the High Street of Stratford-upon-Avon at this season of the year, peopled thus with inhabitants clad in their quaint costume, their short cloaks, doublets, and high-crowned hats. Those respectable, dignified, and grave-looking men, progressing with an a.s.sured and stately step, cane in hand, not hurrying about, as at the present day, but greeting each other with something of ceremony in their deportment.

Many of them stand in groups of three or four and discuss the news, whilst the good wives of the town, albeit they are few in number, for it was not considered over seemly for the sober sort of females to be much upon the tramp, are also to be observed in their wide-brimmed hats, m.u.f.flers and kirtles, pa.s.sing and repa.s.sing along the highway.

The street altogether has, with the beetling stories on either hand, the clear frosty air, and the costumed figures, with here and there a red cloak amongst other sad-coloured suits, altogether the appearance of a winter view in an old Dutch painting.

The news is of import, and all seem impressed with it--for, in Elizabeth's day, so much importance was attached to the life of the Queen by her Protestant subjects, that man looked grave and anxious at such a rumour as the present. Public safety and the prosperity of the nation seemed to hang upon her life.

Grasp, albeit he was slightly regarded in the town, was called on several times, but no one could gain admittance at Grasp's. He seemed to have rammed up his doors against the world. He was sick, engaged, not within, not to be molested. Meanwhile, as the day pa.s.sed and the evening approached, a light and gentle fall of snow seemed to herald the coming winter weather. And as light thickened, the sharp and rapid sound of an approaching horseman is heard at a distance on the Warwick road. Let us listen to the sound, as the sharp spur of that rider urges on his steed; now from a rapid trot to a gallop, and then again apparently he pulls up to a slower pace.

'Tis sweet to hear, in the still evening, the sound of hoofs on the hard road, mellowed by distance, now clattering along, loud and sharp, and now again so indistinct as to be almost lost to the ear.

One or two of the townsfolk have walked forth to meet that traveller and inquire the news, and at length he nears the suburb, spurs on his steed, and enters the inn; an event in the annals of that place which, could the inhabitants have appreciated it, would have doubtless been sufficiently noted.

He came comparatively unknown amongst them, that horseman, unannounced even to his own family. He thought not of his own importance, he knew it not, yet not a building, could it have spoken and felt, but would, we think, have uttered a note of joy. The very bells of the old tower should have rung out a joyous peal, and the hollow steeple of the guild of the Holy Cross have cracked with the reverberation of the sound.

Nay, we can almost wonder that the inhabitants did not, one and all, go forth to greet the rider in the high-crowned hat, long boots, ample cloak, and the long petronels in his girdle, for, take him for all in all, Stratford will never look upon his like again. His capable eye glanced down the High Street, as he rode; a tear glistened on his cheek as he beheld its well-known aspect, and then he spurred his steed, and rode up Henley Street. A few moments more and he was in the midst of his relatives. William Shakespeare had returned to Stratford-upon-Avon.

CHAPTER LXI.

THE DISCOMFITED SCRIVENER.

Grasp's return home was somewhat more sudden than he had intended. He returned indeed in an exceedingly discomfited and excited state.

His friend Dismal was the only person who had gained access to him, and that but for a few moments. During the interview, however, Dismal had gathered from Doubletongue, who also arrived in all haste, that great events had transpired in London, of one sort or other. But so extraordinary and so perturbed did both the lawyer and his friend seem, that except certain incoherent expressions about an attempt upon the Queen's life, a spectre he himself had beheld, and various allusions to poison, a.s.sa.s.sination, death, destruction, and utter ruin. Dismal completely failed in discovering the exact news the travellers had to tall, and hence the variety of reports circulated through the town.

Something certainly seemed to have gone all wrong with the lawyer. His friend Doubletongue had never seen him so put out, and altogether he feared that his wits were going.

To explain the meaning of this agitated and nervous state of the worthy Stratford lawyer, we must go back a few paces in our history.

Grasp, then, it will be remembered, whilst in London, had considerably extended his practice. He had apparently involved Walter Arderne in ruin; he had even carried on his intrigues so as to make the dark Earl, he of Leicester, a party concerned in his plot. For Grasp had given the Earl a hint about certain abbey lands and a manor near Kenilworth, which would fall to the said Earl in the event of Arderne's decease. He had ferreted out the existence of a plot, by means of which he hoped to rise to great preferment; and he had succeeded in beguiling a simple-minded gentleman, resident in Warwickshire, that he was indeed the real and undisputed heir to the estates of the before-named Clara de Mowbray, and actually by bribery, and using all sorts of villainy, got a verdict in such person's favour, and placed him in possession of some portion of the property.

Somehow or other, however, like the labours of the alchemist, which at the moment of projection are frequently overthrown by the bursting of some vessel containing the divine elixir, so all Grasp's schemes seemed unaccountably blown to the winds, and himself discomfited.

Acting upon wrong information, he had followed a female, who travelled in male disguise, as far as Oxford, where he lost all trace of her; and whilst he tarried at the City of Palaces, an express overtook him, with directions to hasten with all speed to Cornbury Park, where the Earl of Leicester was then lying sick, having arrived there by easy stages on the way to Kenilworth, a few days before.

Now, Grasp, since his first introduction to the Earl of Leicester, had made such considerable advances in that bad man's good graces, that the Earl had sent an express for him, in order to make some alterations in his will.

Grasp accordingly set forth, leaving directions that Sir Humphrey Graball, the gentleman who was disputing the succession of the Mowbray estates, and Master Quillett, the Temple lawyer, and with whom he had arranged a meeting at Oxford, should follow him to Cornbury. For Grasp argued very wisely, that both the matters of business apertaining to the Earl's claim, and the concoction of a new will, might be arranged at one and the same time.

The will of the sick and fallen favourite, had we s.p.a.ce to dilate upon it, would perhaps be well worthy of contemplation. That part of it especially in which he bequeathed a costly legacy to his royal mistress--the bequest being wrapped up in a preamble of honeyed words, being not the least curious part of the doc.u.ment.

It was night when the Earl finished his business with Grasp, and the bleak winds of September sounded through the park of Cornbury, as the lawyer, after the interview, sat with the before-named client and the Templar, in a small apartment of the mansion. It was a dark hour, and a certain feeling of awe seemed to pervade that household.

The overgrown and fallen courtier lying helpless and hopeless, alike body and soul. His "ill-weaved ambition" shrank to the smallest span--his parks, his walks, his manors forsaking him. His swollen body, a thing abhorrent even to himself. That beautiful Countess too, attending upon him without love; and whilst duty called her to the side of him who had so vilely used her, the selfish courtier even envying her the life and health she enjoyed.

Nothing however, could exceed the elation of Grasp. He beheld in prospect a glorious array of difficulties and litigation consequent upon the matters he was engaged in; and most of all the success of his machinations in favour of Sir Humphrey Graball, and his succession to the manors of Mowbray, promised him endless profits.

"Sir Humphrey is altogether an easy simpleton," he said, "a most weak and debile man, and can as easily be led by the nose as an a.s.s. Ergo, I shall thrive."

Accordingly, as Grasp sat with his client discussing matters of moment, whilst they relieved their labours by occasional indulgence in the good wine of the house, amongst other papers called for, was the will of the Lady Clara de Mowbray--an instrument we have, on a former occasion seen in his possession. There is always a secret horror suitable to the time, when in some antique apartment, and, by night, men meet together to peruse the musty doc.u.ments which speak the last wishes of those within the tomb, more especially when sickness and those signs which foretell the ending of mortality pervade the habitation. On this rough night

"The owl shrieked, the fatal bellman Which gives the sternest good night."

Suddenly, as Grasp glanced upon that will, he became, as it were, transfixed. At the same moment a sort of hubbub seemed to pervade the house. In place of the silence which the sick Earl had commanded there was suddenly heard an opening and shutting of doors--a summons of persons in all haste, and something apparently of dreadful import in agitation.