T WAS close upon noon, hour of the "ordinary" at the Bolt-in-Tun, that noted tavern over against Ludgate, by the Fleet.
Hither a goodly company of your cavaliero gentry, whether captains of fortune or town gulls, were wont daily to foregather, intent as much upon the gleaning of foreign news as upon the savory promise of a good dinner.
For the common room of the Bolt-in-Tun was rarely devoid of some new great man fresh from oversea experience and full of tales as a hen is of clucks. Here might you at all times reckon upon the diversion of tall stories of Bohemia or Eldorado; of Castile's splendor or cruelty of border onsets and leaguers; of outfalls and camisadoes in Portugal or Muscovy; of boardings, wrecks, and discoveries about the Spanish Main—admirable and much-admired adventures which nevertheless seemed to have left their hero none the wealthier, save in fine-chased outlandish oaths.
But this day, the last of September in the year 1602, forty-fourth of Queen Elizabeth's reign, the ruffling community at the "Tun"—old and young, all lovers of a blade—was too deeply engrossed in the topic of the London hour to have much interest to spare for travelers' tales.
Yet the latest oracle of them all, a man, tall, gray-bearded, of freebooting manner and conscious truculence of mien, was not only well prepared (as his attitude testified) to fill his post with due relish, but, unlike many of his kind, bore evidence of having really countered many hard knocks of fate. One hollow orbit, a gash that had shorn his weather-beaten countenance of the best part of an ear, not to speak of a left hand reduced to one finger and the thumb—each memento of adventure might in its turn have served for fitting introduction to some tall story.
For the moment he sat in moody silence, his single eye roaming fierce and wary from one to the other of the eager faces about him—watching for the chance, it seemed, of springing upon the talk and holding it as his own. From time to time he lifted the ale pot to his lips with that mutilated hand that yet showed menace in its pinch. At length a scanty stock of patience seemed, on a sudden, to fail him; for he raised a voice that drew every eye suddenly full upon him.
"Vincent, again!" quoth he. "By the curse of Mahound, and who may this Vincent be that ye all should be gathering, in thought, like so many rats to-day round his carcass? Let us be talking of living men, my springalls, and let the dead go rot; for, by your laments, I take it that he's dead in his bed even as any old woman—this same gallant Vincentio Saviolo!"
For an instant there was that pause around the table which marks some monstrous pronouncement; then a sudden clamor among the huffing crowd, a scraping of boots and spurs as sundry started to their feet, a mouthing of oaths, a jingling of cans as others turned upon their bench to confront the blasphemer. It required all mine host's persuasiveness to quell the rising threat—aided, no doubt, by the steadiness of the adventurer's single orb that looked with such mastery out of the tanned visage.
"I pray you, masters, no tumult here, and on this day! And pray you, good Captain Strongi'th'arm, you should know that the name of Vincent Saviolo, the great master of fence, who died but yestereve, is one we speak here with respect. Where shall he be mourned more than at the Bolt-in-Tun, which has sounded to his tread daily these twenty years? But you are from foreign parts, Captain, and have not known him."
"'Twas the tallest man of his hands, at all manner of weapons, but above all at rapier play," asserted a gallant from the end of the table, and made in dumb show, with his two forefingers extended, the sketch of a pass with sword and dagger.
"The subtlest arbiter in all matters of honorable difficulty," cried another, older and grave. The encomium was capped by a youth with a court air about him.
"A most noted favorite, look you, of her Majesty. Her Grace liked above all things to be heard tripping Italian with the gallant signor. Ah, Her Grace knows a right proper man!" added he and smiled as one who has his reason for saying so.
"Aye, aye," commented mine host genially, glad to see the vexed question like to be settled by wag of tongue only, "and Master Vincent was likewise a friend of my good Lord of Pembroke."
"And I'll tell you more," interposed a raffish blade from the "Friars," much bedizened if somewhat out at elbows; "one who first put a rapier in Master Will Shakespeare's hand—one who was himself the butcher of a silk button (Oh, rare!) as Mercutio hath it in the play!"