I knew I had heard that voice before, but it wasn’t until he removed the pipe from his mouth and turned his head further, so the candles illuminated his face and neck, that I realized with a shock who it was that sat before me.
The eye patch and the amount of weight he had put on had fooled me. But the long, livid scar on his throat gave him away, for I myself had bound up the wound that caused it. “Nick?” My voice, too, came out sounding husky and uncertain.
He pushed back his chair and stood. “So, you haven’t forgotten me, eh, Horse?” The grin on his face was not the sort that said he was happy to see me.
Hearing the old name with which Nick used to taunt me banished any doubt that it was, indeed, him.
“I—I heard you were dead.”
“Well, that just goes to show, you can’t believe everything you hear.”
He pulled the eye patch aside. The eye beneath it was cloudy white, and the skin around it embedded with small, scablike flecks of black that I took to be grains of powder from the pistol that had backfired in his face. “Needless to say, I’m no longer playing girls, with this face … and this figure.” He patted his expansive belly.
“But you’re acting, still? Wi’ Pembroke’s Men?”
He laughed unpleasantly, and the other men at the table joined in. “Sometimes we call ourselves that. This week, however, we’re the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, right, fellows?”
“That’s right,” said one of his companions, a bald fellow with a red, bulbous nose. He raised his mug of ale. “Don’t you recognize us? I’m Will Shakespeare, and this here’s Burbage.”
“And this”—Nick stepped nearer me and clapped a rough hand on the back of my neck—“this is Horse. He’s with a company who also call themselves the Chamberlain’s Men. Isn’t that a coincidence?” He seized a clump of hair on the nape of my neck and pulled my head back. “Where are your friends now, Horse?”
“I—I don’t ken,” I said.
“What do you ken, exactly?”
I jerked my hair painfully from his grasp. “I ken that crucifix belongs to me. How did you come by ’t?”
Nick glanced at his companions, then shrugged. “Dishonestly,” he said. “Would you like it back?”
I swallowed hard and nodded. “Aye.”
“Well, then.” His hand went to his waist and came up with a dagger. “You’ll have to take it from me.” He thrust the dagger at me, and I stumbled backward. “What’s wrong, Horse? You don’t want it after all?” He dangled the crucifix before me, daring me to reach for it. I glanced toward the door, gauging my chances of escape. “You want to leave, instead, is that it?”
“Aye.”
“You want to return to the Chamberlain’s Men, no doubt, and spill your guts about what you’ve learned. Well, I have a better idea.” He advanced on me, the blade of his dagger moving in a slow circle that held my terrified gaze. “I believe I’ll just go ahead and spill them right now. And this time, Horse, it won’t be sheep’s blood.”
I kept retreating from the threat of the dagger and the menacing grin, until the backs of my knees came up against a bench. I lost my balance and sat down hard on my hucklebones. Before I could scramble to my feet again, Nick was leaning over me, with the blade at my throat-bole. “No, no,” he said, “I’ve just had an even better idea. Remember Titus Andronicus?” He jabbed the point of the dagger against my chin. “Stick out your tongue.”
“Nay!” I choked.
“Neigh all you want, Horse. It won’t save you. Come now, let’s have your tongue.”
Though my vision was blurred with pain and panic, I could see an indistinct shape move up behind Nick. Then the dagger jerked to one side; I felt it slice my skin and, though there was no pain at first, I cried out in alarm.
Nick was pulled backward, struggling and cursing. I slumped forward, holding my bleeding chin. I had to wipe away the tears that filled my eyes before I could discover who had dragged Nick off me.
It was Jamie Redshaw. He had seized Nick’s right arm by the wrist and twisted it up behind his back so far that the point of the dagger threatened to puncture the back of Nick’s skull. With a bellow of pain and rage, Nick let the weapon drop. I had presence of mind enough to snatch it up and put it in Jamie Redshaw’s hand.
He pressed the edge of the blade to Nick’s throat and turned his hostage around so they faced the rest of the Mock Chamberlain’s Men. “Stay where you are, gentlemen,” he said calmly. “If we all keep our heads, then your comrade will get to keep his.”
The bald, red-nosed man laughed. “In truth, we’d just as soon you did the blighter in.” Casually he got to his feet and drew his rapier. “All the more money for the rest of us, you see.” At his cue, the other men of the thieves’ company closed in, too, with their weapons before them.
“Run, Widge!” Jamie Redshaw called over his shoulder.
“Nay!” I replied. “Not wi’out you!”
“I’ll be right behind you! Now go!”
I turned to flee and then, remembering the crucifix, turned back and yanked it from Nick’s grasp, snapping the delicate chain. As I headed for the door, I saw Jamie Redshaw plant a foot in Nick’s back and send him reeling forward into his companions, who very considerately turned their swords aside to avoid impaling him.
With Jamie Redshaw at my heels, I dashed across the highway, nearly breaking an ankle in the deep ruts, and into the safety of the dark woods. “Hold!” called Jamie Redshaw softly. I slowed, and he caught up with me. “They’ll not pursue us, I’m certain, for they’re a lazy lot of louts. Let’s sit down a while.” Groaning slightly, he sank to the ground next to a broad beech, and I sat beside him, on a cushion of dead leaves that had escaped the rain under shelter of the tree.
“Are you hurt?” I asked.
“No, it’s just the old wound acting up. What about you?”
“It’s not a bad cut; I’ve stopped the bleeding. It would have been much worse, had you not come along. I should have done more to save meself, but I was too frightened.”
“It’s good to be frightened. It keeps you from being over confident.”
“That’s exactly the same thing Mr. Phillips told me about acting. You didn’t seem frightened.”
“I didn’t have a knife at my throat. You acquitted yourself well enough—and even better back in Worcester.”
It was the first word of praise I had ever heard from him and I held on to it as tightly as I held the crucifix. “How did you happen to be here, at the same inn wi’ those miscreants?”
“I thought it might be worth my while to join their company—just temporarily, until some better opportunity should present itself.”
“Join them? But … they’re thieves!”
“Well,” he said nonchalantly, “no one is without faults.”
“How long ha’ you been in league wi’ them?”
“Just since your Mr. Armin chased me off. Oh, I had made their acquaintance before that and, as you may have guessed, sold them a few of your handbills.”
“Oh.” I had hoped he might reveal that the robbery was all their idea, that he had been only an unwilling accomplice. “What will you do about the money?” I said.
“The money?”
“What you took from the Chamberlain’s Men.”
“Oh. I’m afraid that’s all gone.”
“Gone?”
“I had a streak of ill fortune with the cards.”
“You gambled it all away?” I said incredulously. “There must have been twenty pounds in that trunk!”
“The trunk? I never touched the trunk. I took no more than a few shillings from the gatherer’s box.”
“But … you brained Jack! We found your stick!”
“It’s no longer my stick. Three or four days ago I wagered it on a hand of cards, and lost.”
“To whom?” I asked, though I was sure I knew the answer.
“Richard.”
“Richard?” I echoed in surprise. “Who is Richard?�
�
“Why, the very villain who so nearly cut your tongue out.”
“Oh. That’s not his true name. It’s Nick. He was once wi’ the Chamberlain’s Men.”
“And now he’s taken to robbing them and burning their wagons? Nice fellow. I expect he deliberately left the stick behind to divert suspicion from him and his companions.”
“No doubt. Tell me, in your time wi’ them, did the name Simon Bass ever come up?”
“It did. I gathered that most of them were once players in a company run by Bass. How did you know that?”
“I’ll tell you sometime,” I said. “In the meanwhile, is there aught we can do to recover the money?”
“We might try asking very politely. Or, on the other hand, we might kill the lot of them.”
Irked by his lack of concern, I said, “What about your honor? Do you not wish to clear your name?”
He laughed. “I’m afraid my only hope of having a clear name lies in taking a new one. Besides, you can tell your fellow players that I’m not the culprit. They’ll believe you.”
“I can’t go back to the Chamberlain’s Men,” I said glumly. “Not after all that’s happened.”
“Of course you’ll go back. What else can you do?”
I hesitated, like a player who is reluctant to say a line he has been given because he is uncertain how the audience will react to it. Finally I forced myself to say it. “I might go wi’ you.”
In the darkness I could not make out Jamie Redshaw’s face, to read his reaction. I could only wait anxiously for his reply. It was a long time coming. At last he said, “No. You would not care for the sort of life I lead. I go where my whims or the whims of Fortune take me, and when I’ve overstayed my welcome, I leave. I get my living by whatever means I may. I cannot afford to concern myself with how honest it is. And I have as many ways of losing money as I have of making it. No,” he said again. “It’s no life for a lad like you, who can amount to something.”
Though I listened to his words, I did not hear them. What I heard was that he did not want me. “But,” I said, my voice trembling now, “even an I could return to the company, I could never go wi’out you. You’re me father.”
Jamie Redshaw blew out a long, heavy sigh, as though he had come face-to-face with something he had been making every effort to avoid. “As I said, honesty is not always my first concern.”
If I had been stunned when he first claimed kinship with me, I was stricken now. “You—you lied to me, then?” I managed to say.
“Let us say, rather, that I misled you.”
“But—” I held up the crucifix, which I still clutched in one hand. “You kenned me mother’s name. You kenned it was carved on the back of this.”
“A cozener’s trick, nothing more.”
“A trick? How—?”
“You recall the little man with half an ear? He and I were confederates, helping one another to relieve coneys of their excess coins.”
“Coneys?”
“Gulls. Marks. Victims. He saw in you an opportunity for us to ally ourselves with a renowned—and profitable—company of players. I don’t think he expected me to leave town with them.”
“Nay!” I cried. “I don’t believe you! You didn’t lie to me then; you’re lying to me now, so I’ll go back to the Chamberlain’s Men! You want to be rid of me!”
Jamie Redshaw did not reply at once. He got stiffly to his feet and brushed himself off. I could barely make out his dark form, silhouetted against the stars. “Well,” he said, “as I’ve told you, I use whatever means I may.” He turned away, then, and I heard his footsteps moving off through the damp, dead leaves, heading toward the highway.
I wanted to call out to him, to go after him, but I was afraid that, if I did, Nick and his friends might find us. In any case, I could not have found the words. There were so many questions tumbling through my mind, I could never have hoped to choose just one. Even if I had, and even if he had answered it, I would have had no way of knowing whether or not the answer was true.
Perhaps he had told me one true thing, at least. It was no doubt best to let him go back to his life, and I to mine. Whether or not we had the same blood in our veins, it was clear that we were cut from different cloth, he and I. If I stayed with him, I knew he would expect me to live by his rules, to behave and believe as he did, and I was not certain that I could, or would even wish to. But the heart does not always want what is best.
In the end I stayed where I was, curled up in the leaves at the base of the beech tree, partly because I was too exhausted to go on, partly because I feared that, if I came out of hiding, I might encounter the company of thieves, and partly, I think, because I still harbored some faint hope that Jamie Redshaw might return for me.
27
When it grew light enough to see, I found the road that would take me to Oxford and London. I was not certain how much help I could be to Sander and the boys. What they needed mostly was money, after all, and I had next to none. But I thought I might manage to find some sort of work. And in any case, I had nowhere else to go.
After I had walked along for an hour or so, a cart came by, loaded with casks of ale. “Going to Oxford?” asked the driver. I nodded. “There’s room on behind if you care to ride—and if you care to help me deliver these kegs when we get there.”
In Oxford I got a ride with another carrier, under the same conditions—that I help him unload his freight. By the time we reached London, three days after I left Cheltenham, I was so stiff and sore from being jostled about in wagons that I felt as though I’d been beaten soundly.
I took my leave of the driver at St. Paul’s. I was shocked to see how quiet the courtyard of the cathedral was. Ordinarily the space was filled to overflowing with the booths of booksellers, stationers, and other vendors, and with folk come to buy their wares or just to mingle. Today there were perhaps half the usual number of sellers. The few folk who patronized them were not standing about casually, looking over the goods, as they normally did. Their movements were much more deliberate. They headed straight for a particular booth, made a hasty purchase, and departed again, avoiding as much as possible any contact with other customers.
Most of the business was at the booths of the apothecaries, and the liveliest trade was in plague remedies and preventatives—amulets filled with arsenic and mercury, tonics made of borage and sorrel juice, salves of egg yolk and swine grease. So far as I knew, no one at Mr. Pope’s was in need of such nostrums. All the boys did, however, suffer from a chronic case of sweet tooth, so I stopped at a candy seller’s stand and parted with a few of my own pennies in exchange for a bag of marchpane. I was so starved, it was all I could do to keep from eating the candies myself.
As I headed south toward the Thames, I noted that the traffic in the streets, too, was unusually sparse for such a pleasant summer’s day. Many of those I passed were holding wadded kerchiefs up to their mouths and noses, like folk downwind of a dung heap; others wore twigs of rosemary in their hair. Though I put little trust in such measures, at the same time I felt uneasy, vulnerable, going about as I was with no means at all of countering the contagion.
Every so often I came upon a house that had been boarded up, and a cross nailed to the door, often with the words LORD HAVE MERCY UPON US scrawled beneath it. I hurried past these with a shudder, as though expecting some dread demon to spring from them.
At the embankment by Blackfriars, where ordinarily a dozen wherry boats were gathered, awaiting passengers, there were now but four. The wherryman who took me across instructed me to toss my penny into an iron pot that, he said, he would later place over a fire, to drive off the venom.
“The venom?” I said.
“That’s how the plague is passed on, you know—through a poison, like snake venom, that seeps through a person’s skin.”
“Nay,” I said, “I didn’t ken that.”
He leaned forward, but not too close. “Here’s another tip for you,” he said confidentially
. “Don’t bathe.”
“Ever?” I said.
He shook his head emphatically. “It opens up the pores, you see, makes it easier for the venom to get in.”
“Ah. Thanks for sharing that.” I stifled a cough. It was obvious the man was following his own advice religiously.
After all the signs I had seen of the plague’s presence, I was half afraid to arrive at Mr. Pope’s lest I find a cross and a plea to God upon the door. I was relieved to see that the place looked the same as always—from the outside, at least.
When I stepped through the doorway, the boys, who were playing in the main hall, spotted me at once and descended on me like wild Irishmen, crowing with delight. As I fought to keep my balance under their onslaught, Goodwife Willingson came trotting from the kitchen, calling, “Whist, boys, whist! You’ll disturb the master!”
I drew the bag of sweets from my wallet and dangled it over their heads. “This is for those who are quiet!”
When they had returned to their play, their mouths full of marchpane, Goody Willingson came to me and, seemingly about to break into tears, clasped both my hands in hers. “Thank the Lord you’ve come at last, Widge. I’ve been at my wit’s end these past several days, what with Mr. Pope being ill, and scarcely a morsel of food to put on the table, and—oh, that’s not the worst of it.” She bit her lip and hung her head, as though she couldn’t bear to go on.
“What?” I urged her. “What is it?”
“It’s … it’s Sander,” she said. “He’s gone.”
I could scarcely believe I’d heard her right. “Gone?” I said. “How do you mean?”
“He went off a week or more ago, and he’s not returned since.”
“Did ‘a not leave a message of any sort?”
“No, nothing.”
“Did ‘a take aught wi’ him? Clothing? Food?”
“Not that I could tell.”
I put a hand to my head, which had begun to throb. “Perhaps … perhaps ‘a went out to try and find work.”
“Well, he’d found something already, that’s the thing. For a week at least he’d been going out several hours each day, but he was always home by dinnertime, bringing with him a few shillings or some food.”
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