The Player's Boy is Dead

by Leonard Tourney

  One of the actors, a neatly dressed man with a frank, open face and clever eyes had been standing next to the money gatherer as they had entered. He introduced himself as the chief of the company and told them that although he did not know the knight and lady they sought, given their quality they would probably be seated in the lords' room, just above the stage for the superior view and fresher air. The captain thanked the actor and pushed Matthew ahead of him into the crowd. ''Get you in front, Master Stock," the captain said, "and search the faces. I would not know this knight were he the second man in Eden and Adam dressed in a fig leaf."

  Obediently, Matthew assumed the lead, the neatly-dressed actor having disappeared into the crowd, and began to make his way slowly forward, but he soon found advancing impossible. Impatient, the captain sent the pikeman forward to clear the way; and the standing patrons, seeing the armed soldiers, made a clearing, buzzing with resentment and staring at Matthew curiously. As they drew to the center of the crowd Matthew looked up at the great pillars behind the stage and recognized the face of Sir Hen-ry's secretary staring down from the lords' room. He grasped the captain by the shoulder and pointed to where he had seen Varnell's face and then followed as the captain and his men pushed toward the stairs and began to climb to the upper gallery.

  The gallery was full of bodies and noises. Fashionably dressed men and fewer women of quality were packed tightly together on the wooden benches gazing down to the stage, either lost in thought or convulsed in laughter. They fidgeted on their benches, called out to their friends, waved brightly colored handkerchiefs. A platoon of saucy, flamboyantly dressed women paraded the narrow passage between the benches and the theater walls beckoning to the gentlefolk or mocking each other. An old woman, her face a mask of white powder and her lips a grotesque red, blocked Matthew's path momentarily; her breath reeked of garlic. She said something inaudible and winked; her mouth twisted into a sneer. Matthew stepped around her and hurried to catch up with the captain and his guard, who had paused to wait for him before entering the lords' room. He followed them in, wondering how many crowded into that honored place were barons and earls. Then he saw Varnell again, and in the same second where Harry Saltmarsh and his wife were seated on comfortably cushioned benches and intent on the scene below.

  Varnell was the first to look up, just as Matthew pointed him out and the captain and his men rushed forward with the arrest order. The secretary went pale. Cecilia Saltmarsh, who had turned toward the raised voices, stared at the captain, then at her husband, and finally at Matthew, her eyes widening with fright. Harry Saltmarsh was the last to realize what was going on; he turned languidly and looked at the captain, then immediately jumped to his feet at the same instant one of the pikemen moved forward to bind him. The two men struggled in the confined space, pushing Varnell hard against the wall and Cecilia Saltmarsh to the floor. Then somehow, despite the superior strength and number of officers, Harry Saltmarsh broke free, turned, mounted the railing, and leaped into the air.

  Matthew and the captain rushed to the railing. Below, Saltmarsh had landed on the stage, his face contorted in pain; he looked about him confusedly, struggled to his feet while the audience, thinking the leap some curious sort of stage business, laughed and applauded wildly. The actors gawked at Saltmarsh and one another. None seemed to know just what to do. The gallants in the lower gallery hooted and threw their hats into the air.

  Then Saltmarsh twisted his head back to look up at the lords' room. His wife had regained her footing and was bent over the railing staring down on the stage. She had covered her mouth with her hands. Below, her husband seemed immobilized by pain and confusion; only his thick lips moved, as though he were trying to frame an appeal or explanation. He turned to look at the audience around him. The crowd had fallen silent. Suddenly as though awakening from a dream, Saltmarsh rushed to the apron of the stage and thrust himself into a rout of apprentices who greeted his fall with howls of anger and derision.

  As it turned out, Joan had not stayed for his letter. She had ordered Philip to hitch up the cart and the two of them had driven to London. She was waiting for Matthew when he returned to the inn late in the afternoon.

  "I have news that could not wait," she said breathlessly, collapsing with weariness onto the bed.

  "Indeed," Matthew replied after a proper greeting and an expression of wonder mat she should have come so far.

  "I think 'twas more likely your curiosity about matters here."

  "Something has happened, then?" she said, her eyes widening.

  "It has, but shall we have your news first?"

  "No," she replied firmly. "We'll have yours first. I'll not have mine run a poor second.'Tis too important."

  "Well, then, Sir Henry, his lady, and the secretary were taken not two hours since. Sir Henry near broke his neck falling to the stage at the Globe. When I saw the secretary last, he was all aglisten with his sweat, shivering as though stark naked in a north wind, and confessing more than he was asked for by anyone accompanying him. The lady said nothing but looked* as white as a corpse. The Queen's officers bore them all straightway to the Tower. I had my stomach full for the day of them all, so returned here, 'and a good thing too, since now you've come."

  There was much more to tell her, of course, about the great house at Theobalds, his conversation with Cecil, and the excitement at the Globe, but it would keep for the ride home. She did not wait for him to invite her to speak her own news.

  "Elizabeth is with child!"

  "What say you?"

  "Goose, Elizabeth, your daughter, is with child at last. Your son-in-law has done his duty by her and by us. What think you of that?"

  He leaped from the bed and embraced her. "We shall be grandparents yet. You should not have delayed this. Twould have put me in a better mind."

  She smiled with satisfaction, her arms around his waist. She said, "I supposed your having been to London would have put thoughts of home far from your head. What will you do now about the shop with no public charge save to keep the peace yourself?"

  "Why, we shall grow old together. I'll teach my grandson to cipher and in due time to keep accounts. Come, help me with my bag. We'll leave forthwith and doze if we must in the cart."

  "I will not," she said, her lips forming into a charming pout. "This is my first trip to London and I will see the sights though I die of 'em. 'Twill be winter before I put on a grandmother's name. For now, I expect to see the old Queen, perhaps an earl or two, and a play if you please. Indeed," she said, warming to her theme, "I would see at least one play. Something cheery and with no offense in it. The innkeeper with whom I spoke below tells me of a new comedy at the Globe, by a Master Shakespeare, full of summer ..."

  Two days later it was snowing. It had taken them all by surprise, the wind having suddenly shifted, and now the snow had covered the streets. Already the smoke of city fires had turned the evening sky the color of undyed wool. Inside the tavern it was warm and crowded, for the weather had sent passersby scurrying for shelter; and having found jolly company indoors and drink and food, they stayed. By the large front window looking out on the street the players were huddled companionably about a long table. There was a great deal of shouting and some singing, a rowdy group of sailors quarreling at the bar, staid merchants exchanging news, toasting one another, haggling over the price of their wares, a puny effeminate Frenchman playing the virginals in the comer, his music lost in the general tumult. From everywhere there was the raucous call of the waiters and drawers, callow youth with servile expressions and insolent tongues.

  At the moment Will Shipman was engaged in an animated discussion with Big Tod; they were, in fact, veering hard toward a quarrel. Gwen, her belly already betraying the rotundity of motherhood, was trying to calm her husband, but she had come late to the old antagonism between the two players. Neither would be pacified. Now the two were jaw to jaw while their fellows chose sides and quarreled among themselves. Then with a fist brought sharply down upon the tab
le so that the blow spilled more than one cup, Will Shipman asserted his authority and the players fell into a respectful silence.

  "Now," he said, "we shall not play where we will but where we can. We are best off hiring a private house or innyard, say for a share of the poke. When summer comes we'll be off to the country again. As for the plays we shall perform"—here Will paused for a drink and gauged the effect of his words—"we may do Hieronimo, which, though old, draws always a good crowd, or perhaps Friar Bacon. Myself, I prefer the tried and true rather than go with what may please some starving scholar's fancy."

  "Then we will not do Aeneas again," Samuel Peacham lamented. "And here I have brought my part therein to perfection."

  The little actor's remark, posed puckishly, brought the relief of laughter, which Gwen joined, having been for the most part of the afternoon overawed and certainly outvoiced by the masculine company.

  "Nay," Will replied thoughtfully once the laughter and jibes had subsided. "I've no heart for it now."

  Remembering Richard Mull, the others nodded in agreement. It had been five months, yet the death was green in their hearts.

  Then Gwen cried, "Look, 'tis the constable and his lady, here in London."

  They all looked toward the door. Matthew and Joan Stock, having in passing seen the players through the window, were making their way through the crowd. Will Shipman bellowed a greeting and beckoned them toward the table; the Stocks shed their caps and cloaks and in a moment all were seated in a joyful reunion, Joan having much to say to Gwen, noticing, as she immediately did, the young girl's condition.

  "Why 'tis so with my Elizabeth!" she exclaimed. "I am heartily glad for you both." , Matthew was explaining to Will Shipman and the others their reason for being in London. The Brothers Tod and Samuel Peacham were listening attentively, as were Joan and Gwen when the women realized where the conversation had drifted.

  "So Harry Saltmarsh shall pay for his crime," Big Tod said triumphantly.

  "Of that I have been assured," Matthew replied, having come within the hour from his second meeting with Cecil, this time in the great man's London chambers. "If not for the murders of the boy and the priest, then for his other crimes. Varnell has told everything and more in exchange for his skin."

  Matthew recalled the meeting vividly. In a chamber of such intimidating grandeur that Saltmarsh's seemed a scrivener's closet by comparison, he had watched Cecil interrogate Varnell for nearly two hours. Pale, trembling, and disheveled, the secretary had not once glanced at Matthew. Instead his eyes were fixed on Cecil with a terrible fascination, as though he were about to fall upon his knees, not out of fear or reverence, but from sheer awe at such a concentration of power in a single mortal. The secretary had indeed told all, and in loathsome detail. Matthew had looked away for shame. The reciting of the acts curdled his blood. Cecil heard all with lordly detachment, his handsome features unmoved by passion. Varnell might have been a clerk summing up the great lord's accounts, or a groom recounting his treatment of an ailing mare. From time to time Cecil jotted down a word or phrase in a black leather book, less Matthew supposed to jog his memory than to terrify Varnell, whose eyes were red from weeping and whose voice periodically fell to a dry whisper. Then Varnell had been taken away, his fate uncertain.

  "And what of my lady?" Gwen asked.

  "Her husband's fall will be hers, too. Have no fear of that. When Sir Henry's acts become known, she'll not be eager to show her face out of doors."

  " 'Tis all passing strange," Will Shipman mused. "I have never understood the half of it."

  "Simon the hostler killed the boy," Matthew explained. "Richard Mull followed Varnell into the wood thinking he was being taken to the Hall for another meeting with his mistress. She and the boy were lovers. The hostler grabbed Richard by the neck and stabbed him while Varnell looked on. Then the two drug the body back to the stable so it would be thought one of you had killed him in a quarrel."

  "A devilish scheme," Big Tod exclaimed. "I wonder that Simon was willing to show you where the boy had met Varnell."

  "Blaming the murder on one of you was VarnelFs idea. When I began to look into things at the inn, Simon grew frightened and was quick to point the finger elsewhere, even if there were the risk of having the murder laid upon him somewhere farther down the road."

  "Was it gold, then?" Will Shipman asked.

  "In good part," Matthew replied. "Varnell procured the hostler on his employer's orders. Twas out of greed, but also ambition. The secretary had a great opinion of himself, was not content to remain the servant of a country knight, no matter how big a frog Saltmarsh was in our little pond. In that he was like many of our young scholars now, who for want of good breeding or secure employment think to climb to heaven by doing some great man's dirty work. They read all the Italian authors, I am told, and therein learn such villainy that 'twould make a pirate blush. As for the hostler, he hardly needed the lure of gold. He hated Richard Mull. I could tell it the first time I spoke to him at the inn. The boy was all that he was not—fair, straight of limb, and young. And beloved of the girl. That was the worst of it for him, for Simon wanted the girl himself. So he killed Richard Mull and, by the way, the girl too, she dying of grief as she did."

  "Which brings us then to Sir Henry," Gwen added,

  "Ah yes," Joan ventured, for of that particular question she had been thinking much during their two days in London. Her husband was content to allow her to proceed; she thrust her elbows forward on the table, confidently and began:

  "Harry Saltmarsh was unhappy in his affections. He would have loved is wife if he could, but she gave him no pleasure and she knew it. 'Twas no fault of hers, rather something lacking in her husband. She hated him every day of their mamage and let him know it. And he abused her foully, encouraging her to take lovers because that gave him a strange sort of satisfaction. Yet it also vexed his spirit. He lusted after the boy, made him his tool in the curious war he waged with his wife, and finally, fearing the boy might bear tales or wearying of the game, he ordered Richard Mull killed. Nothing pleased him at last but having his way. There's a moral in that," she concluded soberly, "though I am not sure yet exactly what it may be."

  "But it is hard to believe a woman would act so unnaturally," Samuel Peacham said, his pinched face looking fairy-like wedged between the larger forms of Big Tod and Will Shipman.

  Big Tod let out a cynical guffaw, upon which his little wife reached across the table to slap his face playfully.

  "Such wickedness," Will Shipman said seriously.

  "Our piety," Joan ventured again, "must make us call Harry Saltmarsh a wicked man, but were we to probe his heart we might find more the unhappy man, with so great and piteous a flaw that all else proceeded from it. His great powers were no blessing to him, nor his money. Had he been poor, he might have wasted his soul in mere vanities. As 'twas, his high place made him a great devil. His fall will be the farther."

  "So he is in the Tower, then?" Little Tod said in what was more a statement than a question.

  "I am told that he is so," Matthew responded, thinking again of his meeting with Cecil.

  "Shall they hang him or will he rot, as they say some great ones do waiting the dispositions of their cases for years?"

  "Who can know?" Big Tod said, taking his wife by the hand and pulling her toward him. "I have little faith in the law or in them administering it, but look rather to my own right arm."

  "Whatever heaven accord," Joan said, "we can trust that all will rightly end, as we will see if we have the patience."

  "And what of you, Master Constable?" Will Shipman asked goodhumoredly. "Will you now be content after all of this great business and mingling with lords to mind your shop, or must you now make your livelihood the catching of wrongdoers? I should think counting rolls of cloth would now be as dull to you as herding sheep or mowing hay."

  Matthew Stock laughed pleasantly. "I do dream of my shop ever, as Joan here will affirm."

  But Joan sm
iled subtly and said nothing, content on this occasion to let her husband speak for himself.

  "I am hungry," Matthew announced after more small talk at the table. "Surely this tavern must have an upper room where a company such as we be might eat. I think I have sufficient in my pocket." Matthew made a great show of searching for his purse, found it, opened it, and to the delight of all announced that there was indeed enough, though he and Joan might have to walk the way back to Ghelmsford.

  "I'm for the best part of a pig," Big Tod declared. "And my wife, too, for now she must eat for twain."

  Matthew called for the tavern keeper, a big, burly man in a wine-stained smock and with a companionable grin. There was room indeed, and ready too, one large enough for them all and with a cheery fire. And there was a pig that he assured Matthew would be ready not half hour after the company had gathered upstairs. In the meantime there would be drinks aplenty and good fellowship.

  Outside the snow had stopped and in the streets there was a festive air, as before some great holiday. The snow would not stay on the ground; it was spring and a jocund summer would soon follow. Matthew and Joan watched it as in a vision through the window while the company found their places at the table and the drawers brought the first round of ale. Somewhere below them they could hear the martial rhythms of a flute and drum, then the plaintive strains of a song. The quarreling sailors had made peace at last; some of the merchants had joined in, forgetting their trade. It was an old song of the country Matthew knew well.

  "Nay, I know not the words." Joan flustered when her husband encouraged her to sing.