The Playmakers

by Graeme Johnstone

  The gargoyle dropped his aggressive pose and the big man moved forward with the outstretched hand of greeting.

  Shakespeare could see the face clearer now - it was a face of epic proportions, appropriately matching the mountainous girth. It was round, it was red, it was cheery. The puffed cheeks glowed. The bulbous proboscis was not so much a nose but a fleshy morass of facial mud flats in which flowed a delta of inter-connecting red veins. The wild whiskers flew in every direction.

  “First up, I would recommend you get out of that stream, young man,” came the hearty voice.

  “I am! It’s cold.”

  “Exactly, and I have it on good authority that cold water weakens the spine. You don’t want to end up like Soho here, do you?” Shakespeare looked at him, astonished, as he stepped out of the water. The mighty laugh erupted from the belly and echoed across the creek again. “Just joking,” he said. “Poor old Soho, alas, was dealt one of life’s wild cards at birth. But I have no more loyal an employee. Allow me to introduce myself, I am Rufus J. Budsby, entertainment entrepreneur … raconteur … and bon vivant.”

  The French reference was lost on Shakespeare, whose studies had been limited to modest Latin and whose knowledge of France was restricted to the understanding that they were Protestant England’s worst enemy, especially as their monarchs stuck assiduously to the dangerous faith he himself had been brought up on - Catholicism.

  “Bon ..?” said Shakespeare.

  “Vivant,” added the big man, rolling the word up from his tummy. “I enjoy life.” And so saying, he began to unscrew the silver cap from the Blackwood stick. It came off, to reveal a thin, corked silver tube secreted in a hollow in the top of the stick. He pulled the cork out and proceeded to drink some sort of liquid from the tube. After two swallows, he proffered the tube.

  “Whisky?” he said. “It’s an engaging little spirit out of Scotland, also known as the ‘water of life’. It’ll warm you up.”

  “No thanks,” said Shakespeare wanly.

  “So, I’ve given you my name and a brief account of my life, what is yours?”

  “Oh, yes,” said Shakespeare, stepping forward, confusedly wiping his hands on his trousers, and shaking the big man’s hand, “William Shakespeare.”

  “And you are a ..?”

  “Ah, leather worker.”

  “And ..?"

  “Er, lover of fine ale.”

  “And ..?”

  “Um.”

  There were several seconds silence as the two men stared at each other and Shakespeare groped for a third point to adequately round out his own trilogy of endeavour.

  Finally, the notion came to his head - of course, he knew what he was now! He cleared his throat.

  “And free man! That’s it, free man. I am the New William Shakespeare. The born-again William Shakespeare. The Shakespeare ready to take on the world.”

  “Excellent!” said Budsby, shaking the hand of his new associate warmly. “Excellent. I can use your talents Mr New William Shakespeare. Look over there.”

  He nodded to an area a hundred yards downstream, where, at the narrowest and shallowest point of the creek, seven horse-drawn carts and carriages were slowly fording the cold, listless water. The horses, a collection of chestnuts, piebalds and blacks of varying ages, were hooked together in twos, and stuck wearily at their task of pulling a series of brightly painted wagons. The clatter of their hooves over the stones mixed with the ring of banging pots and pans hanging off the last wagon.

  In the distance, in the fading afternoon light, Shakespeare could just make out that the lead wagon had a large sign on its side.

  As he strained to make sense of it, the big man spoke up. “Let me tell you what it says,” he said, as he put the whisky tube back in the stick, and screwed the silver cap on. “It reads, ‘Rufus J. Budsby presents for your enjoyment and edification his leading troupe of Mummers’.”

  “Mummers?” said Shakespeare.

  “We dance, we sing, we juggle, old boy,” he said.

  “Oh, I see.”

  “We have fun, don’t we, Soho?” he added, ruffling the gargoyle’s hair. “We go from village to village, enhancing the otherwise dull lives of the good residents with our skills, our humour, our athleticism.”

  “Athleticism?” said Shakespeare incredulously, staring at the giant.

  “Well,” said Budsby, patting his rounded stomach, “not my athleticism, as such. I leave that to my artistes.” He rolled this last word out as ‘arteests.’

  “We amaze, we intrigue, we astonish,” the big man continued. “Surely you’ve seen us? Where are you from?”

  “Stratford. Just up the road.”

  “Ah-ha! Performed there only yesterday, in that muddy little paddock at the south end of town. You were not amongst the enthusiastic audience?”

  “Yesterday was not a very good day for me.”

  “So I see,” said the big man, pointing at the cut on Shakespeare’s temple with his stick. “I therefore take it that is why you are here, beside a cold stream, all alone, endeavouring to clean the grime and blood and, dare I suggest, the memories away?”

  “Yes. My wife …”

  The big man waved the cane dismissively in the air. “Sssh,” he said, “tell me no more. I’ve been on the road long enough to know that a man’s past is not important to me. You are talking about the Old Shakespeare, which I don’t need to be regaled with. I only know of the New Shakespeare, and it is the New Shakespeare that I am offering employment.”

  The gargoyle moved forward again.

  “Not your part, Soho,” said the big man. “No one can take your place.”

  “Employment?” said Shakespeare.

  “Look,” said Budsby, pointing with the stick to the wagons as the last of them crossed the stream. “What do you see?”

  “Wagons.”

  “Yes, and what is pulling them?”

  “Horses.”

  “Precisely. And what do we need to combine the horses with the wagons?”

  “Harnesses,” said Shakespeare thoughtfully. “And bridles!”

  “Exactly. And forgive me if I am wrong, but upon extricating himself from the cold stream, and thus saving his spine from permanent injury, did not the New Shakespeare tell me he is a leatherworker?”

  “Why, yes.”

  “And look at my friend, Soho here. What is he wearing around his pantaloons?”

  “Why, a belt.”

  “And what do I have on my feet?”

  Shakespeare looked down, marvelling again at how such a giant body could be sustained by such tiny feet.

  “Boots.”

  “Top marks, Mr New Shakespeare. Excellent observational skills. Bridles, harness, belts, boots. They are all made of leather, not to mention the uniforms we have for the tumblers, and the massive strapping the strong-man wears around his girth.”

  He walked forward, leaned close to Shakespeare’s face, and continued almost conspiratorially. “It is a tough business, travelling the road, Mr New Shakespeare. Entertaining the populace, going from village to village, setting up, pulling down, giving them what they want, a thrill for a couple of pence. It causes much wear and tear on our equipment and clothes, and requires someone to repair them and keep them in shape. I believe you are just the man for the work!”

  “Why, Mr Budsby, thank you.”

  “Don’t thank me, young man, you are a godsend! Fate has dictated that Soho and I should suddenly decide to alight from the wagon at this point today and stretch our legs for the last hundred yards or so - a rare event for me, you will appreciate - and thus come across you.”

  “Fate?”

  “We have been struggling with rapidly deteriorating equipment for weeks now, Mr New Shakespeare, since our regular fix-it man, Mr Mullins, became the target of a group of sailors at an inn in Portsmouth.”

  “What happened?”

  “They filled him to the gills with rum, struck him a hefty blow on the back of his head with the leg
of a chair, and he was last heard of applying his stitching skills to canvas on a ship heading for Norway.”

  Shakespeare lightly touched the wound on his head and winced. “I think I’ll be staying out of inns for a while …”

  Budsby let out a raucous laugh, joined by the eerie mime of a laugh from the silent gargoyle.

  “I think you should, Mr New Shakespeare,” said Budsby. “By the looks of that, I agree that you should.”

  Their laughter died down, and Budsby moved to close the deal.

  “I will be frank, Mr New Shakespeare, I can only offer you a bed and meals in return, but are we in agreement?”

  “Yes, we are in agreement!” said Shakespeare brightly.

  “Splendid. Come on, then. We’re setting up camp on the other side of the creek, let’s cross it and get you cleaned up and into some dry clothes.”

  By the time they had walked down to the ford, and tip-toed across it, the wagons had been drawn up in a circle in a clearing a little further into the forest, and the troupe was busily making camp. Horses were being tethered, tables made up, and already a big fire in the centre of the clearing was sputtering into life.

  Soho disappeared under instructions to get some fresh clothes for their new employee, and Budsby ushered a thankful Shakespeare towards the fire, where he crouched as close he could to get some warmth into his drenched body.

  A stocky, muscular man came walking quickly across the clearing, and handed Budsby a tankard of ale, the sight of which made Shakespeare feel inwardly ill.

  The man had shiny black hair, a handsome clean-skin face, and the muscular build of an acrobat. But by the way he talked to the others and approached Mr Budsby, he appeared to be some sort of second in command.

  Shakespeare’s estimate proved correct when the stocky man said to the big man, “All under control, Mr Budsby,” he said.

  “William Shakespeare,” said the big man, waving his tankard, “Mr New Shakespeare, that is, allow me to introduce you to Nick Sayers, gymnast, acrobat and my extremely talented manager.”

  Shakespeare stood up from the fire, and the two shook hands, Shakespeare astonished by the ferocity of the man’s grip.

  The big man continued, “Once we have dried him out, Mr Shakespeare is going to take over Mr Mullins’ job and help us with the repair of our equipment.”

  “Welcome aboard,” said Nick Sayers, looking a little puzzled over the ‘New’ in the stranger’s title. “There’s plenty of things to fix. And plenty of other things we can get you to do, too. Can you juggle?”

  Shakespeare looked surprised. “Oh, no,” he replied. “No.”

  “Mr New Shakespeare,” chipped in Budsby. “You will find the key to success for an entertainment troupe on the road is, above all other things, versatility.”

  Shakespeare looked around, and took in the lesson. Just as the leading hand was an acrobat, others, too, had their tasks. It was the juggler’s job to get the fire going. The wirewalker’s task to tend the horses.

  And the company’s comic act, the one that Budsby enjoyed most to introduce to his awe-struck audiences, “The Amazing, Incredible, Indivisible Siamese Twins”- one of whom was actually a giant jet-black Nubian woman, and the other a diminutive blue-eyed albino from up near the border with Scotland - did the cooking.

  Even Soho had the task of checking the grounds last thing at night to ensure everyone’s safety before they went to sleep - although troupe members were bemused as to how, should something nasty happen, the little silent fellow would raise the alarm. But that’s what Mr Budsby wanted, and that’s how it was.

  The New Shakespeare discovered all this and more as he warmed himself by the fire, listened to the conversation of the troupe members, devoured two plates of the stew and fresh-baked bread the so-called twins had prepared, and washed it down with a huge mug of hot, sweet tea.

  It was all very exciting for the young man from tiny Stratford - not yet twenty-one, and whose life had previously simply progressed from school to apprenticeship to hasty, nasty marriage in a rapid and all-consuming blur.

  That night, the New Shakespeare, dry, warm, fed, and sober, snuggled down in his bed of hay and two well-worn blankets underneath the wagon he had seen with the banging pots and pans on it - the one he now knew to be the maintenance cart - and stared at the glowing embers of the fire in the middle of the clearing.

  And for the first time in years, he felt wanted.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The next ten months were bliss. William Shakespeare had never encountered anything like this before. New faces, new places, new hope.

  The Rufus J. Budsby Company of Mummers took him in to their hearts like a long lost son, thrilled with his keenness and diligence for work. “My little runaway,” Budsby would boom, “he does me proud.”

  And what work! The company had accumulated a backlog of maintenance problems and repair jobs since the late-departed Mr Mullins had involuntarily taken an unexpected career change into the maritime business.

  The easy part was the trimmings needed for costumes, including gloves. These were made of the soft leather and chamois that Shakespeare had worked on at his father’s business since was thirteen. He astounded the performers, especially the women, with his attention to detail as he not only repaired but often re-cut their garments to make them more comfortable, thus laying the foundations for a better performance.

  The Siamese twins were especially thrilled with the re-shaping he did of a brace that they wore on stage and which give the impression they had been irretrievably joined at the hip from birth. Designed by Budsby for concealment under their scanty jungle costume, it fastened the giant dark-skinned beauty and the diminutive pale northern border waif so tightly and cleverly, it fooled the eye of even the most suspicious rural fairground patron. But it had always been a troublesome piece, leaving them sore and chafed after each show.

  “Born of a black Nubian princess rescued from the clutches of an emir of Arabia,” Mr Budsby would announce to the startled customers as the pair hobbled from one side of the stage to the other. “And sired by a valiant English gentleman expeditioner, carrying the flag of our mighty nation and the goodwill of our gracious Queen Elizabeth, and said to have sailed with Sir Walter Raleigh himself.”

  Patrons would leap back when the pair would suddenly lunge in perfect unison to the edge of the stage and hiss.

  Meanwhile, the big man would continue, “Thus perfectly producing two totally different embodiments - one of English civilisation and the other of tribal primitiveness - in the one indivisible form. And brought back exclusively to our fair land by my good self Rufus J. Budsby for unique and once-only display before your disbelieving eyes.”

  The act was an absolute show-stopper, especially when the dark one would suddenly roll her eyes back into her head and babble in some sort of gibberish while the other replied to her in the Queen’s own English. Jaws would drop when they would then swap and exactly the same words would come out of the opposite mouths.

  Such was the act’s drawing capacity and importance to the troupe, Mr Budsby pledged his eternal gratefulness to his new maintenance man for having resolved the thorny issue of the troublesome brace.

  “They were going to leave me, Will!” Budsby told him, after the new piece of equipment had been warmly received by the duo and inspired them onto a bravura performance at Salisbury.

  “But by virtue of re-design of the brace, you have assured the future of our little road-travelling family. The twins now plan a long stay in their customary roles.” The big fellow leaned forward and whispered. “Or, as the smaller of the duo confided in me,” - and at this point he pitched his voice high to mimic the girl’s voice - ‘It’s wonderful what Mr Shakespeare’s done with the brace, Mr Budsby. It don’t ride up me crack no more …’” He pulled back and let out the bassoon laugh - the deep, rolling laugh that had so grasped Shakespeare’s imagination on the first day they met - slapped his thigh, slopped his tankard, and concluded, “Ah, she’
s a delight that one. The epitome of all innocence. Doesn’t it make you feel good to be amongst people like this?”

  The Salisbury show was part of a long-running tour that Mr Budsby had developed during his many journeys criss-crossing England over the years.

  They spent nearly a week at Salisbury, as part of a local fair. But at some villages they would simply set up, do a day’s show, stay the night and be gone the next morning. The big fellow had the canny knack of knowing when the well was drying up and it was time to pull up stakes and move on. “I smell the coin of the realm in the wind,” he would intone, as they rolled into a town, Soho at the head of the wagons drumming up patronage with an incredible set of hand-stands, somersaults, and leaps. The sight of a red-and-white gargoyle bouncing down the road to the beat of a drummer-boy, and accompanied by a standard-bearer, was enough to lure women, children and tradesmen out of homes and shops into the street to watch the procession roll by.

  Shakespeare noticed the love-hate relationship Soho quickly developed with a crowd. Children were especially intrigued and amused by his athleticism, but repelled by the ugly face and misshapen body. This would not be helped when, on most occasions, the road was muddy, and his stubby hands became encrusted with black slime. There would be shrieks of both laughter and horror when he would suddenly leave the centre of road and rush at the crowd on the sidelines, holding his muddy palms out as if to grab them. Children would hide behind their mothers’ skirts - the mothers themselves retreating in alarm.

  But, as Budsby always pointed out, there was none better at the game than Soho.

  The little fellow knew when to pull back, and leave people merely with a fast-beating heart and an implanted message that they must view the show and see what the rest of it was all about.

  It was marketing at its cleverest, the drummer-boy providing the sound, the bouncing dwarf the action, and the standard-bearer declaring that Mr Budsby’s mummers would “Astound, Astonish and Amaze With Acts of Unparalleled Agility.”

  Because most of the populace could barely read, the canvas also carried true-to-life paintings of three of the premiere acts - the Siamese twins, the strong man and the fire-eater. This was important, for while Rufus J. Budsby could smell the money, it required cleverness and persistence to seduce it out of tight rural purses.